“I wanted to create a space that would be a hideaway from the busy world outside,” says the artist Daisy Sims-Hilditch of her Notting Hill flat she shares with her boyfriend Alessandro, “somewhere I can feel calm and let my imagination run away with me.” Standing in the spacious open plan main room, it is easy to see why this apartment appealed. Although one of west London's busiest thoroughfares is only a minute or two away, very little of that noise and bustle penetrates on this quiet street. What does pour in, however, is light , via a glorious double height window that allows the room to be bright and airy even on a dreary winter's day. For an artist, light is everything: the flat was Daisy's studio before it was her home, and the temptation to paint in front of that window is still irresistible from time to time.

The process of transforming it from studio to home took place in 2021, and involved stripping everything back to start from scratch. Daisy had a dream team of advisers in the shape of her parents, John Sims-Hilditch, who co-founded Neptune, and Emma Sims-Hilditch, who runs her own eponymous interior design company. Both helped her to redesign the layout, particularly in the main room, which incorporates the kitchen, previously a separate and annoyingly poky room. “Dad was very helpful in coming up with an amazing kitchen design that gave me a lot of space,” says Daisy. It is indeed the pièce de resistance of the flat, with cabinets in Neptune's ‘Suffolk’ design arranged in an L-shape and running into the dining space at the end. It was also John's idea to install a charming internal window between the kitchen and the hallway, which allows light to flow into the darker hallway from the kitchen window.

Photography by Dean Hearne