“I didn’t want to play it safe.” Look around Neil McLachlan’s Bloomsbury flat and you’d be hard pushed to deny that the New Zealand interior designer has done himself proud on that front. Luscious palms crowd almost every wall, save for those lined with the vast vertical mirrors that bounce borrowed light and bunches of bananas around the space. A pair of vast antique French doors, wearing their age with great grandeur, stand sentinel either side of the fireplace. Huge avian prints à la Audubon cast beady, birdy glances over visitors. And all in a windowless room.
You might think that pattern, especially one with such personality, might make a bijou space feel even smaller, but Neil is a dab hand when it comes to decorative tricks (hence those vertical mirrors). This palmy print does the opposite, while the grid-like pattern overlaying the paper’s fabulous fronds, like the leading of an old hothouse, stands in for windows on the walls. That said, natural light is hardly in short supply, pouring in as it does from the large skylights overhead, which have the extra benefit of offering added privacy and quietude.
It takes vision to turn a former workshop in a behemoth of a building into something so bright, so ebullient, so brilliantly offbeat. But, as Neil says, “good design is good design. As long as you have the right principles, you can make it work.” As the flat comes on the market with Inigo, Neil takes us on a tour of his vibrant, verdant home and explains how his own principles of pattern, patina and playfulness have been brought to bear in this Bloomsbury bolthole.
