Box Of Treasures

Each of the rooms in Ana Engelhorn’s London home comes perfectly wrapped in jewel shades

- Jo Leevers

Golden ferns, paper stars and armfuls of winter foliage are all that’s needed to add a festive air to Ana Engelhorn’s London home. Her Georgian house is already laden with atmosphere, with rooms decorated in jewel shades and chandeliers that cast iridescent flecks of light on to the ceilings.

But when Ana, an interior designer, her husband Carlos Rubia Simón, a marketing manager, and their children Lola, 10, and Charlie, two, moved into this tall townhouse, it was wall-to-wall beige. ‘In theory, it was decorated to be a clean slate, so that anyone could come in and like it. In my case, I didn’t like the decor but loved the location and architecture – and could envisage plenty of ways to make it less dreary,’ she says.

The family moved to London from Barcelona and rent this home, but this didn’t deter Ana from carrying out a comprehensive transformation. First, she pulled up a few corners of the cream fitted carpets to see what condition the floorboards were in. ‘I just thought, we’re in this 1800s building – imagine what they could look like?’ Luckily, they were a nice surprise. ‘We had to replace a couple of boards, but on the whole, they were in good shape,’ she says.