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.

"The curtain is a prime example of the Japanese art of yūgen," says Yoko. "It doesn’t shut off the view completely but invites you to want to see more. The addition of fabric also softens the corners of the staircase." (Image credit: Anna Stathaki)

"I’m inspired by the Japanese word yūgen," Kyoto-born Yoko says. "Loosely translated, it means a subtle beauty, nothing too vocal. It’s often used in Japanese theater to mean not quite saying everything but implying and hinting at a little more than is said, resulting in people leaning in and being curious to know more."

"The owner loves that he can sit here and look out to the canal," says Yoko. (Image credit: Anna Stathaki)

Pooky

Valiant Desk Light in White

A simple white desk lamp with an angled head is practical but aesthetic, too.

The clients had already chosen darker colors for this space, which is in the basement. "So we used these greens and walnut tones to inform design choices upstairs in bedrooms and bathrooms," says Yoko. (Image credit: Anna Stathaki)

The architecturally fascinating open staircase had already been built by the time Yoko arrived to work on the interior decoration, jutting up the floors and letting light flow down its length from the windows.

Yoko saw it as an opportunity to frame different areas, with the great orb-like pendant light hanging down from the middle and drawing the eye right up to the top.

"The room is actually quite small, so we had to do something quite dramatic to make it still feel special," says Yoko of her decision to include pattern for the only time on the walls here. (Image credit: Anna Stathaki)

Quarlton Mural Forest Green Sample

A nature-inspired mural makes for the perfect patterned accent in a bathroom — interesting but still soothing.

Not that yūgen was her only reference point. "The clients had been to Burning Man for the past 10 years, and I could tell how much they loved it," says Yoko.

"So after much discussion of why they were drawn back, I started to incorporate the warm colors you get at golden hour in the desert, those ambers and terracottas as the sand lights up.

"And the great, round lights were meant to match the sun as it hangs low and bright, a subtle way to evoke the spirit of Burning Man back in a north London home."

"It’s pretty unusual to have a window next to the bathtub, but it lets in so much light," says Yoko. "We added the bamboo blind as a necessary privacy measure though." (Image credit: Anna Stathaki)

West Elm

West Elm Waffle Towel

There's something so luxurious about a waffle towel — and these towels from West Elm are giving ultimate spa bathroom vibes.

The vagaries of desert sand were recreated with the limewash used throughout the home, though Yoko came up with an ingenious way to make the budget go further.

"Limewash is obviously expensive, but we’d color-matched it to a Little Greene paint, so somewhere nearer the top of the house we switched to that and you’d never know," she says of a seamless transition in a house that is full of them.

"The overall effect is one of total peace and calm," Yoko says. Quite unlike, even if it is inspired by, Burning Man.