This London Home Taps Into the Japanese Concept of Yūgen for Its Dreamy, Sunset-Inspired Aesthetic — "Subtle Beauty, Nothing Too Vocal"

Living room with plaster pink walls, black plaster finish fireplace wall, orange corner sofa, white stone coffee table, beige armchair and white ceiling lights.

The funny thing about those very tall, very narrow, very covetable early Victorian London houses is that, despite their four storeys, they often don’t have as much floor space as you’d hope. Especially by the time we’ve included our large modern furniture and crammed in our WFH desks, big-screen TVs and mega appliances.

But designer Yoko Kloeden decided to use the height and slender width of this modern home in Islington to her advantage, letting light into every floor through a triple-height staircase with a triple-height window, paring back the palette and finding ways for each potentially pokey space to instead be nothing but peaceful.