This Home Was Completely Designed Around a Single Bold Painting, and the Colors Flow Through Every Room – 'If Art Is an Afterthought, It Never Quite Ties a Space Together'

A warm neutral london living room centered around a large fireplace with large artwork hung above. a blue curved couch sits to the right, with a wooden coffee table and patterned rug .

‘With a very bold, colorful painting, you can go one of two ways,’ muses Sophie Ashby of interior design firm Studio Ashby. ‘You can make everything in the space pale and neutral and let it sit as a pop of color on the wall; or you can use it as a diving-off point for the entire color palette of the room. My preferred approach is obviously the latter.’Happily, Sophie’s clients – a New Zealand-American couple who had recently returned to London from Geneva with their young family – were wholeheartedly aligned with her way of thinking.

Family Room: Existing shelves were repainted in a gray-blue, backed with a deep, earthy red. Shelves in Parma Gray, Farrow & Ball and Sienne Brulee, Argile. Delfino armchair, Arflex; covered in Adorabile Alpaca, Dedar. Lily cocktail table, Tom Faulkner. Pebble ottoman in Trippy in Indigo; Pine Trees rug, Sister by Studio Ashby. (Image credit: Studio Ashby / Styling Anna Sheridan / Photography Kensington Leverne)