After a full-scale renovation and interior re-design by Jane Perfect Interiors, this Arts & Crafts home in Edinburgh is everything its patient new owners could have wanted
When you’ve found a home you’re sure is going to last you forever, what’s a little extra wait to move in?
Not long after Clare and Tim Pharoah and their three children decided to relocate to Edinburgh from London about four years ago, an agent told them about an exceptional six-bedroom Arts & Crafts villa in Morningside, mentioning that they might be able to buy it off-market.
But it came with an unusual catch – the elderly owners, who had lived there for decades, wanted one last year in the house before vacating. Where other would-be purchasers might have been put off, the patient and pragmatic Pharoahs saw an opportunity for comprehensive forward-planning.
A dream home is worth the wait
“We shook hands on it and signed the paperwork,” says Clare, who is originally from Dundee, “and then they stayed in the house for another year. While they were doing that, we hired architects, we hired builders, we sought planning permission. Because although the house was fantastic, it needed some changes to make it just right for us.”
The outgoing owners repaid the Pharoahs’ flexibility by allowing teams from architect Somner Macdonald and building contractor Orocco to come and go over the following months, measuring up and making ready to break ground on a big side and rear extension overlooking the garden. It would add a brand-new light-bathed open-plan kitchen, dining and family-room hub to the house. In parallel, the couple sought out an interior designer to undertake the challenge of bringing aesthetic and practical harmony to every room in the soon-to-be enlarged house.
“We basically decided to strip everything back so that we could do it to our own taste, and modernise it and update it to work for us as a family of five,” Clare recalls. “Although we’d done an extension and some decoration in our house in London, this was on a much bigger scale – which was why we felt we needed someone to pull everything together.”
Bringing contemporary design to an Arts & Crafts build
Founded in 2019, Jane Perfect Interiors was an award-winning yet still relatively new studio, and it was small compared to others on the couple’s shortlist of contenders. But these proved selling points rather than drawbacks once Clare and Tim started ranking their favourites.
“Jane came out as the person with the highest rating for both of us, in terms of matching our style and because we liked the fact that she hadn’t been in business for too long,” says Clare. “When we chatted to her, we could tell that she would give the project her full attention.”
Another selling point was the designer’s contacts book of superb local tradespeople, including Uwe Stange from boutique cabinetmaker and joinery firm Stange Kraft, whose contribution to the project was to be fundamental.
Jane Perfect transforms the interiors with prowess
Jane wasted no time in heading down to London to meet the family and start sussing out exactly the style they had in mind for their new home – a marriage of traditional and modern, with vivid colour, lots of fine texture and, above all, a coherent flow.
Each room needed to feel distinct yet part of a joined-up whole, blurring the line between which bits of the house where old and which were new. “They wanted character and for it to be joyful,” says Jane, “but it’s a big, big house, and they needed a designer in so it could be orchestrated in a cohesive and seamless way.
“It was the biggest project we had taken on by that point,” she adds, “so we were really delighted to get started.”
Collaboration is key
Jane Perfect Interiors worked closely in advance with both Somner Macdonald and Orocco to ensure that, at the end of March 2022, when the day finally came that the Pharoahs took possession, they could all hit the ground running and move forward together with their respective hands-on roles in the project. “It was very much a team effort,” the designer reflects. “Good communication was key. There were some stressful moments but it all worked out.”
The family were able to move into their much improved home by August 2023 – not bad going, considering the scope of the works. There are so many ways the new house has enriched the family’s lives since then. Take Clare’s dressing room, for example.
After years of cramming everything into too-small wardrobes and drawers, she wanted lots of hanging space for long dresses and dedicated display shelves for her shoe and handbag collections. “I’m slightly obsessed with clothes and fashion,” she laughs.
