Designer Matilda Goad freely admits that when she and her husband bought their traditional terraced house in London, they didn’t think about how it would work with children. “I guess I had a pretty naive attitude to my interior design,” she laughs. Soon after, their daughter Domino was born and they realised they needed extra space – it was time to convert the loft.
Today, Domino, now three, and her one-year-old brother August can run (or crawl) around the house’s upper floor, where there are two bedrooms, a bathroom and a large playroom on the landing. Matilda chose to sacrifice a tiny bathroom and a guest bedroom to create this space, which is safely hidden behind a tomato soup-red stair gate that seems to be both a design and safety feature.
“The stair gate is a bit odd,” she muses. “Sometimes you feel like it’s not quite right to spend money on it, but then you think about how much it’s part of everyday life.” Matilda’s husband Tom’s company, Blockhouse Build, did all the joinery, including in Domino’s room, which is in the attic.
A built-in wardrobe and a custom-made bed make the most of every space and bring a fairytale magic to the room. “I thought back to my own childhood and the things that were so exciting back then,” explains Matilda. “I loved visiting my older cousins or siblings and sleeping in their rooms. We wanted to build this sleeping bed with another mattress in a drawer underneath so Domino could invite friends over for sleepovers.”
The long, narrow room is lit by two Velux windows. “I suffer from claustrophobia and wanted a different view, so it also has a little round porthole that looks into the bathroom,” explains Matilda. The room is surrounded by a striking Josef Frank wallpaper that stretches across the walls and the sloping ceiling. “It’s quite rich, but I really wanted to use it somewhere and it felt very appropriate,” she adds.
It’s perfect for a child’s bedroom (dense prints seem to be able to hide the odd felt-tip pen scribble), but Matilda also designed it with longevity in mind; the room could transform into a guest bedroom, a home office or a shared space for the kids.
“I love that sense of fun and fantasy, but I don’t like things that are made specifically for children – they get old too quickly,” she says. The sense of playfulness is in the styling: pictures, vintage bamboo furniture and toys, carefully arranged by Domino.
When it comes to the endless mess that children seem to produce, Matilda tries to find a balance: “It’s about having systems. I’m a fan of baskets where you can just throw toys, but you have to accept the chaos a little without going overboard.” Small wall hooks – placed within reach of the children – make tidying up fun for them. “It’s about thinking about things at eye level.” matildagoad.com
