Tour a stylish London home designed for festive parties

Step across the threshold of Charles and Alice Holt’s west London home over the festive period and you know you’re in for a good time. The couple love nothing more than hosting an evening of champagne, cocktails, and carols, complete with a resident piano player, in a tradition passed down from Alice’s mother. ‘It brings together every generation and lots of friends,’ says the literary agent. ‘It’s our biggest yearly ritual.’

The couple moved here in 2020 with their children Freddie, now 14, Isabella, 12, and Olivia, 8, and soon realized that to strike a balance between form and function, a full reconfiguration was required. So they turned to Sophie Pringle, who’d also worked with them on the house design of their last place.

‘From the first viewing, we could sense the bones were right,’ says the designer and creative director of Pringle & Pringle. ‘It was a home the family could grow into and it had plenty of space for guests, which was important since Charles’ relatives regularly visit from South Africa.’

As well as playing to the couple’s spirit of adventure, the key was to rationalize the layout, reworking a warren of rooms on the first floor to create bedrooms and bathrooms for all the family, each branching out of the central staircase.

‘Sight lines were particularly important,’ Sophie says. ‘Alice is deaf, so it’s helpful that she can now see into all the rooms at a glance from the landing, enabling her to keep an eye on the children.’

In addition, the ground floor was reworked to allow for a library space at the heart of the house; a spacious yet cozy kitchen with a convivial round table in one corner, and also a series of utility spaces running along the side of the building, including a boot room (complete with an extra-large sink for washing Coco, their cavapoo), craft space, laundry and pantry.

That all-important party atmosphere comes into its own thanks to two sitting rooms on either side of the staircase, designed for Alice and Charles respectively, both reflective of their individual passions while complementing one another. ‘They are distinctive spaces, but can easily be opened up for entertaining,’ says Sophie.