HOUSE OF delights

Come the holidays, this Chelsea home is a hive of activity and its distinctive decor is the ideal backdrop for the most amazing parties

- RACHEL LEEDHAM

There have been some memorable Christmas parties in the Chelsea home of Blake and Chad Pike. 'I go to the flower market and buy miles of garlands and mistletoe and then we have a steel brass band and a drinks party for all our friends,' says Blake with a breeziness that belies the scale of the operation. 'It's become something of a tradition - a highlight of the festive season.

That the house so readily lends itself to a crowd is no happy accident. In 2013, the couple - Chad is founder of Eleven Experience, a luxury adventure travel company with lodges in far-flung corners of the globe, while Blake oversees its interiors arm, Twelve Interiors - gave the 1920s home they share with their four children a top-to-toe rethink. 'We'd already been here a decade,' says Blake, whose family divides its time between London and New York. 'But the original renovation had been so poorly done that everything was falling apart.

Enter New York-based architect Eric J Smith, with whom the pair had already collaborated on Eleven's lodges and their Shelter Island home. With a deep affinity for American Georgian architecture - and a particular admiration for Robert Adam and David Adler - Eric was a natural choice. 'We wanted to draw on the Georgian houses in the neighbourhood to give ours the character it was missing,' Blake explains.