Laura Ellis
Why purchase an apartment imagined and decorated for a fictitious owner when you’re wealthy enough to hire your own interior designer who could tailor it specifically to your tastes and needs? Yet the turnkey craze is sweeping the globe, and among its fans is the superstar French interior designer Jean-Louis Deniot. “I enjoy the financial pressure of creating a home that needs to sell,” he says, “and the fact that the design choices are more than just ‘I like blue, you like pink’ and are based instead on what adds real value to a property.”
The dining room’s table, chairs in Romo and Pasaya fabrics, and Blue Savoy marble mantel are custom. The four-bedroom home, which was previously three separate apartments, has numerous assets—a prime location, a double garden, its own front door, and lots of lateral space in a city where small rooms are the norm. One place he never holds back: the entry hall, as illustrated by the custom geometric door and bronze door-and-wall trims he designed for this project.
The armchair is by Deniot for George Smith, the custom bedding is in Loro Piana and Lelièvre fabrics, and the 1950s chandelier is by Lalique. For the Belgravia project, he imported textiles from Thailand or had them custom made in Morocco and opted for bamboo rugs over pricier silk ones. Stylistically, his goal was to concoct a timeless look, but with just the right amount of personality—“enough to stand out, but not too much to deter a potential buyer.” To that end, he adopted a neutral palette, adding interest in the form of sunny yellow and rich blue accents. Where Deniot’s turnkey interiors particularly sing is in his use of antiques—a rarity in the spec-house world, where the norm is contemporary furniture fresh from the factory.
