The colourful London townhouse of James Arkoulis, co-founder of Howark Design

When James Arkoulis and his husband Stuart Spice moved into their new home down a leafy west London street, they found the property to be in fine condition. Yet, there was a crucial element that was lacking. ‘The house had been really nicely taken care of by the previous owners, and the original fireplaces and floor in the hallway were there, but apart from that everything was painted white,’ recalls James.

With his creative eye, irrefutable knack for colour and a lot of patience, he has transformed the property into the vibrant and enchanting home it is today. ‘They had very few belongings, so it was different to how it is now, packed to the rafters with every single thing that we love!’

Having lived previously in a flat in a big Victorian conversion, where period details had been removed and everything had been modernised, the couple were keen to move onto something with a different feel. ‘We were specifically looking for an older property that had the original features and some character to work with,’ explains James, and it was this two-storey Edwardian house that caught their eye.

‘Our original plan was to do a big extension at the rear and reconfigure the ground floor to make a bigger kitchen and a separate utility and pantry,’ says James. However, after moving into the house in 2021, the couple spent some time getting to know it and when deciding to start the renovation a year and a half later, they had had a change of heart.

‘We became really attached to the house the way it was. We loved that no one had changed the original Edwardian layout in all this time and we realised that for two people the house is a very generous size,’ James explains. The idea of extending was dismissed and the new focus became working within the confines of the existing layout. The kitchen and bathroom were reworked, windows and doors were replaced at the back of the house and a cloakroom was installed under the stairs.

When the time came to redecorate, James was faced with a blank canvas. While some may have found this intimidating, his experience stood him in good stead. He co-founded Howark Design with Saskia Howard in 2017, an interior design studio known for confident use of colour and creating schemes that feel individual and inviting.

Rather than taking influence from a particular style, James focused on the feeling he wanted to create throughout the interiors. ‘I wanted it to be a representation of where we are in our lives right now, so it was about creating an identity in the house and the look comes out of those things.’ One notable source he drew from were his and Stuart’s heritages. ‘Stuart is full English and I’m half English-half Greek. From a design point of view, those two cultures have strong influences, so I wanted the house to feel like you could sense that connection. It’s a traditional English property but it feels like it has a Greek influence, which I think you can see in the kitchen and in some of the artwork we’ve collected,’ he says.

The schemes were also steered by Stuart’s passion for nature, which led to his career as a professional garden designer. Botanical and organic motifs weave through the house, from the block-printed floral pattern on the sitting room curtains to the headboard upholstered in William Morris’s iconic Willow Bough in the bedroom. ‘I also wanted to try and choose colours that had a natural palette to them, whether that was greens or the more autumnal tones like the yellow in the kitchen. Saskia was a brilliant sounding board because she’s amazing at working with colour,’ says James.

While the more contemporary style of their previous flat had limited the colour palette, James was determined to introduce bolder hues into the new house. ‘I wanted to try and push myself to use the colours I love in a really unashamed way.’

Patience was a virtue when it came to finding the perfect shade for each room. While the search for a not-too-pink peach for the guest bedroom was solved by colour matching an aftershave box in an attractive mix of peach, terracotta and pink, the olive green for the sitting room proved particularly tricky.

‘We must have gone through 30 different olives. Turns out a lot have quite a grey base to them, so they look great on a sunny day but in London a lot of the time it’s not like that. We eventually found this colour made by a guy called Color Makes People Happy in Sussex. The colours are all handmade with natural pigments; the only drawback was it took about seven coats to get it on the wall, which Stuart did. He’s just about forgiven me,’ laughs James.

Among the bold walls decorated with the couple’s art collection and curated mix of antique and contemporary furniture lies an array of hand-painted details which lend a relaxed playfulness to the interiors. One such example is the stylised frame around the kitchen window which was inspired by a trip to Barcelona. ‘I wanted to make the sink a really nice area because it was particularly grim before,’ James explains. ‘And no one ever really wants to do the washing up. I mulled it over for a while and then I remembered we’d gone to Park Güell and there were building there where they had these amazing painted details around the windows.’

Similarly, the turquoise bath in the bathroom has been covered in a painted lotus flower motif. James’s inspiration? A hippopotamus he bought from The British Museum when he was 11 years old. ‘The lovely thing about your own home is some things you can just get stuck in yourself. I love that, really getting involved in every part of the house. It’s nice to have that connection.’