The designer's room: How rare, 19th-century wallpaper was repurposed inside a Grade I-listed apartment complex on London's Piccadilly

Wendy Nicholls joined the interior-decorating firm Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler in 1976, having previously worked for Mann & Fleming and Charles Hammond. Throughout her career, her mantra has always been to create spaces that reflect the owner’s identities. In the case of this set in Albany, the Grade I-listed apartment complex on Piccadilly, London W1, that was converted from a mansion in 1802, the client was ‘very much a client who knew exactly what she liked’.

Designed by the French wallpaper manufacturer Dufour, the large-scale panoramic wallpaper was printed from woodblocks with colours finished by hand; it had previously been hung in the client’s property in Paris. ‘We took it down, brought it to London and set about having it re-hung here,’ explains Nicholls. There, she found it was a foot too short to reach the ceiling, which is thought to be more than 10ft high. Undeterred, a team from Colchester Lister was called in to paint in further elements of the sky to complete the picture. ‘It’s a rare, 19th-century wallpaper that you can’t just bung up — it needed careful consideration to figure out how it would make sense in its new home.’

Much of the furniture in the room was made or sourced for the client during earlier projects and given a new lease of life here by adding new cushions with double-edge frills that pull together the underlying colours of tobacco, blue and ochre. The footstool has a length of leopard print ‘slung over the top’ and a Baltic Chandelier with ormolu arms, blue glass and clear crystals crowns the room. ‘It was the look my client wanted: slightly romantic, slightly Swedish and slightly French in nature,’ says Nicholls. The curtains are in a fine-striped beige and white linen that is unlined to allow the light to filter through. ‘The room is timeless and full of interesting bits and bobs, which is what happens when you spend a lifetime collecting lovely things.’