Before and after: revisiting Rita Konig’s west London flat

If you happened to find yourself in Rita Konig’s glorious west London flat with the April 2016 issue of House & Garden in your hand, you’d have little clue that you were in the same space that featured in that issue. Apart from the tell-tale C&C Milano red and white striped curtains that still hang in the front room – once Rita’s bedroom and now a generous kitchen-dining room – it is an entirely different flat today. Walls have moved and rooms, full of colour, pattern and Rita’s trademark inventive details, have taken on entirely new purposes. The catalyst came in 2020 when Rita separated from her husband and bought from him the one and a half bedroom flat above that had been a buy-to-let, enabling her to transform what was a ground floor flat into a generous two-bedroom, two-floor space for her and her daughter, Margot. A lattice-like staircase now connects the floors, with two bedrooms and two bathrooms upstairs, and the kitchen-dining room, living room, entrance hall, study and playroom all downstairs.

‘I just got to the point where I needed the flat to grow into the next phase,’ explains Rita, who bought the ground-floor flat in 2012. ‘I had so much time to think about what I wanted to do and a really good understanding of what I wanted from the space having lived there for almost 10 years,’ explains the designer. ‘I’d turned 50, was a proper grown-up with proper clients and I wanted my home to reflect that.’ She delights in the multiple ‘small wins’ that came from rethinking a space that she was already very well acquainted with – the way in which she managed to create a jewel box of an office by extending out into what had been an overlooked bin area; the way that she created a feeling of generosity by sizing up the existing door openings; and the way that she carved out space for coats and storage – hidden behind pretty batik-patterned curtains – in the little hallway that now leads to her study. This blend of the beautiful and practical is typical of Rita’s approach to design.

Very often, comparing before and after images is a case of looking at how the terrible can be transformed into the terrific, which, of course, isn’t the case here. ‘What’s fun is that the before was great – I’d just grown out of it,’ says Rita. ‘What the renovation has done is make everything so much more comfortable for how I live now,’ she adds. ‘It’s been such an interesting exercise in seeing how different a room can be – and often it’s not a case of either better or worse,’ she adds.

The kitchen turned entrance hall-bar

At the back of the flat, what had been a small kitchen became an elegant hall-turned-bar area. ‘I’ve rather grandly called it the garden hall,’ says Rita of the space, which now forms the main entrance to the flat and is reached through the enchanting garden that designer Butter Wakefield masterminded. There is another entrance at the front (for food deliveries and muddy paws) but this is the one that Rita and her guests use.

‘I can’t believe I survived that kitchen really, because there really was no space to cook anything,’ says Rita, with a laugh. However, when she designed the flat back in in 2012 – just back from living in New York and in an entirely different head space – she remodelled it to create a home for herself as a single girl about town: entertaining space, in the form of a large living-dining area, was given priority and the blue and white kitchen was kept purposefully small and practical, with Corian-topped units and a chic tiled wall. It served Rita well for a good few years, and as she fondly remembers, ‘it’s a space that saw us through everything.’ The pressure for a change, she recalls, ‘only amped up when it became a family home.’

In this new iteration, the kitchen moved to the front of the house (taking over what had been the bedroom), freeing this space up to become an elegant – and unexpectedly generous for London – entrance hall. ‘I didn’t realise what a win this room was until it happened,’ says Rita, who had the walls papered in Mia Reay’s joyful Japanese-inspired ‘Ainu’ design. A central table – ‘Rita Konig’s Chelsea’ from Oficina Inglesa – doubles up as a bar, alongside a custom shelving system created in collaboration with Russell Pinch, which runs along the left wall (just out of shot). ‘I love how the table is multi-functional – you can make drinks on it or play cards or have dinner for four around it,’ Rita explains. What had been the built-in larder became a coat cupboard, which Rita added a rail into. ‘I was about to spend a fortune on cupboards, which I just couldn’t afford so this was a good solution,’ says Rita, who had the wallpaper wrapped around the jib door so you now barely spot it.

Homes & Gardens, October 2024
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