At first glance, this apartment in Canada Water, London, doesn’t give much away. From the outside, it’s unmistakably of its era. But step through the front door, and the story changes entirely.
Designed by Uns Hobbs, this petite 1980s home has been transformed from a blank white box into a color-soaked jewel box that feels less like a city residence and more like a boutique escape. What this house design might lack in size, it certainly makes up for in personality.
'We wanted it to feel like a little holiday from everyday London life,' Uns explains. 'It's the sort of building that lacks character from the outside, very much a product of its time, but that's what made the interior transformation so exciting. We had a blank canvas to work with.'
The client, who is Italian and lives near Lake Garda most of the year, wanted a home that felt joyful and special the moment she walked through the door.
Drawing on a heady mix of Mediterranean warmth, traditional English style, and a fearless approach to pattern, the designer set out to create something both deeply personal and universally delightful to any potential visitors. 'Think cozy cottage meets Lake Garda villa,' Uns explains.
'The client came to us wanting to inject some real personality into what was essentially a white box flat,' she continues.
'She often stays in Kit Kemp designed hotels and loves that layered, bold approach to interiors, so we took her heritage and her love for color and pattern as the basis of our brief,' Uns adds. 'The challenge was to create something that felt personal to her but would also delight guests.'
When asked how she wanted people to feel upon arrival, Uns says: 'Like they've escaped for the weekend, to a little jewel box that transports you somewhere completely different and lifts your spirits the moment you step inside.'
'Because the apartment is also used as an Airbnb, it meant we could go bolder and almost take a boutique hotel approach to the design,' she adds. 'It needs to feel special and memorable for guests whilst still being deeply personal to our client when she's there.'
'There's that sense of layering and comfort you find in country houses, but with the warmth, color, and handcrafted quality of Italian interiors.'
With no structural changes to work with, Uns had to be clever with how she reimagined how each space looked and functioned. Instead, color, texture, and clever spatial tricks do all the heavy lifting, reshaping the apartment without adding any extra square footage.
'The apartment is quite compact, so we had to make each space work incredibly hard,' Uns explains. 'You enter directly into the open-plan living room and kitchen area, and we wanted to zone each space without physically dividing the room – giving each area its own aesthetic identity whilst maintaining flow.'
'In the small kitchen, we needed to maximize storage without making the space feel cramped or overly functional. It had to work hard but still feel beautiful and inviting,' she adds. 'It's brave, it's beautiful, and it's completely functional, everything a kitchen should be.'
Extending the kitchen backsplash upward draws the eye vertically, making ceilings appear taller. It’s a bold move, but in a compact space, it reads as playful and intentional rather than overwhelming.
'We really went for it,' Uns says of the kitchen design. 'We used a gorgeous mix of patterned and plain zellige tiles, and took them all the way up to the ceiling. This gave us the opportunity to create these beautiful uniform patterns, and we even created a tiled open shelf, which was inspired by old Mediterranean kitchens where you display your ceramics and everyday objects.'
'The cabinets are painted in a vivid, joyful color that works perfectly with the leaf print wallpaper visible from the living room,' Uns continues, adding that even though the flat is quite new, they deliberately chose pieces to give it soul and history. 'We sourced antique vases and earthenware pots to give the space that rustic, timeless feel and prevent it from looking too contemporary.'
'Once we found the kitchen tiles, they became the jumping-off point for the entire color palette of the home. From there, we layered in earthy tones and mixed them with bold blues and raspberry pinks. We wanted you to feel enveloped by rich colors and patterns from the moment you walk in.'
As well as adding to the pattern-rich story, wallpaper was also used as a clever zoning trick. Here, the playful leaf-print wallpaper acts as a room divider, giving the living-come-entry area its own identity within the open-plan layout while acting as a backdrop for layering art, mirrors, and color-saturated furnishings.
'We had to keep the existing Italian sleeper sofa, which was supremely comfortable, but it looked like a spaceship! The challenge was working out how to disguise its unusual proportions. We created a loose cover and piped certain areas to help conform the shape, then added a skirt to hide the feet,' Uns explains of the pink couch.
Instead of relying on a single overhead fixture, she layered lighting throughout the room so each pocket of space has its own atmosphere. Architectural details then add yet another layer of distinction that the original shell lacked.
'We added a sweet pelmet shape with curved edges above the window to soften the room and bring in some architectural detail,' she says, nodding to the English detailing. 'We also installed dentil coving around the ceiling, which is a wonderful trick for making a room feel bigger and more considered; it softens what was essentially a white box.'
Designing the small bathroom required some of the most inventive thinking in the entire apartment. The footprint is undeniably bijoux, yet it needed to deliver on every practical front.
'The bathroom was particularly challenging because it's so small, but we had to squeeze in loads of additional storage and a proper shower enclosure,' Uns continues.
Color is what sets the tone immediately. 'We went with a blue and yellow scheme, which feels both fun and traditional. We used ornate hand-painted Delft tiles, the crackle glaze corner motifs are just gorgeous, combined with a blue and yellow checkerboard floor.'
'It's tiny, but it feels really special.'
In a home where color and pattern take center stage, the sun-soaked bedroom offers a slightly softer note – but it’s by no means less memorable.
'The walls feature a playful yet calming wallpaper by GP & Baker that has movement and interest without being overwhelming,' says Uns.
'It's essential in a small bedroom to have more than just overhead light,' she explains of the layering of a Beauvamp Saucer Lantern overhead, mixed with Vaughan's Library Wall Sconce and bedside reading lamps topped with Imogen Pope's Florina Shade in Crabapple.
'There's a real sense of abundance in the scheme, nothing feels sparse or minimalist,' she adds. 'Every surface has something to delight the eye, whether it's wallpaper, tiles, or fabric. We mixed geometric patterns with florals, stripes with prints, and it all works because there's a consistent color thread running through those Mediterranean blues, terracotta tones, and fresh greens.'
Again, with limited square footage to work with, Uns focused on creating a space that feels cocooning rather than confined.
'The bedroom is another bijoux space, so we designed and built a fitted wardrobe to maximize storage and added layers of lighting to create atmosphere,' she explains of the careful balance between practicality and style.
'It's a genuinely small apartment, but we didn't want to compromise on storage or functionality, and we certainly weren't going to hold back on pattern and color,' she continues. 'We had to fit everything in, wardrobes, bathroom storage, kitchen storage, comfortable seating, a king-size bed, without making the flat feel cramped or cluttered.'
'That's where all the clever details come in: the fitted bedroom storage, the tiled shelf instead of wall cabinets, the bespoke side table, the mirror to bounce light around. Every decision is so important in informing how the space is used and feels!'
In small homes, the smartest design moves are often the ones you don’t notice on first glance.
In the living room, Uns' favorite item is a bespoke side table that houses a myriad secrets. 'From the outside it just looks like a lovely rattan-fronted table, but we actually designed and had it custom-made with a rattan front specifically to house the client's modem and TV wireless boxes – all those ugly but necessary bits of kit that need to be hidden but accessible.'
'It's those invisible problem-solving details that really make a small space work well,' she explains. Additionally, in tiny spaces, it's often the level of detail that matters most.
'There's an artwork we found early on in the project that both the client and I absolutely fell in love with, it's a still life by Gavin Houghton that now hangs proudly in the living room,' Uns adds.
'It totally captured the essence of what we were trying to achieve: gestural, colorful, layered, and full of life. It was one of those magical moments where you find the perfect piece, and suddenly everything clicks into place.'
More than anything, Uns designed this maximalist small space to lift the mood of anyone who enters, wrapping the space in color, pattern, and warmth.
'We wanted our client's sunny Mediterranean personality and colorful taste to shine through in every room. It's pattern-rich, color-saturated, and has that collected-over-time quality that makes a space feel personal rather than decorated all at once.'
Despite its busy postcode and compact proportions, the apartment carries the spirit of a boutique hotel, the kind of place where every corner offers something exciting to discover.
'It's not often a client gives you completely free rein to be as colorful and bold as you possibly can be, so working with this client was joyful,' Uns adds.
'Sometimes you just have to trust your instinct and go for it. The worst thing we could have done was play it safe. She trusted us completely and encouraged us to push further rather than pull back, which is every designer's dream.'
