Artist and maker Bridie Hall's north London house

It soon becomes clear, on arrival at her house, that Bridie Hall has a wondrous approach to living. A decorative artist and maker, Bridie has an eponymous line of accessories that brightens countless homes. She co-owns the interiors shop Pentreath & Hall with architect and interior designer Ben Pentreath, for which she also sources antiques. Like the best dealers, Bridie is a collector first, and it is her collections of unusual objects, coupled with her joyous sense of pure, strong colour, that makes her house so intriguing. ‘It’s an artist’s home, not an interior designer’s home,’ she says, as a tortoise appears from under the kitchen sink.

Born in New Zealand, Bridie has lived in Islington since arriving in London 18 years ago. She bought this stucco-fronted Victorian property in 2016. ‘It’s my moving-on house,’ she says, referring to the break-up that prompted its purchase. ‘I wanted somewhere I could exercise my aesthetic freely and inhabit the whole space equally.’

The lower ground floor has an open-plan dining area and kitchen, which leads to the garden via a walk-through pantry with, unusually, an adjacent shower room. ‘I come down for coffee in the morning anyway so it fits with my routine,’ she explains. A double living room takes up the ground floor, which is raised above street level. Above this, on the first floor, is Bridie’s bedroom, a dressing room and a west-facing roof terrace, which in summer is bathed in sunlight from 10am until 8pm. There is a second bathroom – with a bath – in the attic.

‘The house hadn’t been updated for 30 years so, while the floor plan worked for me, I didn’t feel guilty about redoing everything else,’ Bridie says. With the help of architect Manan Upadhyay from Ben’s practice, which is known for combining classical detail with colourful, contemporary elements, various changes were instigated. The sitting room was opened up by removing a wall that blocked a window, and by expanding and squaring off the dividing arch; and a chimneypiece was brought down from Bridie’s bedroom, creating a pleasing symmetry.

French windows were installed on the first floor so the roof terrace could be accessed through the dressing room rather than a window on the stairwell landing. Details were added, including skirting and cornicing throughout based on existing late-Regency cornicing, and the hall and attic bathroom were panelled. The kitchen is in ‘typical Ben Pentreath country-house style’, built around a 40-year-old Aga that was already there.

The whole transformation took eight months. Bridie – with her miniature poodle, cat and tortoises – moved in towards the end of 2017: ‘The guy who came to pick up my packing boxes asked when the work was starting. I was thrilled – nothing looked new.’ This included the contents, for ‘moving on’ does not have to mean ‘letting go’. ‘Everything that was mine before, everything that I bought during the relationship and everything that I liked, I kept,’ she declares. Most of the furniture, from Victorian to contemporary – much of it from local auctioneers Criterion – travelled with her from her previous house (featured in House & Garden in March 2014).