Keep it simple: Ikea hacks and no toaster — the central London flat offering a masterclass in stylish micro-living

For interior designer Bella Bunce, 44, who changed career a few years ago after running her own successful film production company for 14 years, being savvy about property started early.

She bought her first London flat when she was a teenage film runner in Soho. The tiny windowless studio on Portobello Road, bought with a £1,000 deposit and a mortgage, put her foot firmly on the ladder.

She sold it in 1999 and bought a bright flat on a leafy square in Clerkenwell. “I was the first of my friends to buy a grown-up flat.”

A lateral first-floor conversion in a gracious but then faded Georgian terrace, it had high ceilings and wrought iron balconies, in an area just on the up. After smartening it up on a tiny budget, she let it for 16 years, but has recently moved back in with her second husband, Simon George, 56, and her daughter, Missy. She had two other houses in between.

​Bella’s very happy in the sunny, stylishly redone Clerkenwell flat. “Simon and I owned two big houses, everything would need to fit into our new home, this two-bedroom flat. So I gutted it.”

When the couple got together in 2014, Bella changed career, and changed her philosophy, too. Both she and Simon had recently got divorced and sold their businesses. Now came the question of where to live.

“My house was in north London, his was south. Basically, we were travelling housekeepers, shuttling between the two. You waste so much time thinking about cleaning the windows and pollarding trees, rather than important things like visiting art galleries. I like the idea of simplified micro-living, so I suggested we try it out here, as our first home together.

But after 16 years being let out, the flat was “filthy, with stained carpets; cupboard doors hanging off, and the loo handle was missing”. Only a total redo would do.

Bella’s move from film production to home production was natural. They’re both very visual, and both depend on coming in on time and on budget. She’d been doing houses up for other people for a couple of years, so this would showcase her sensible, fresh style — and all on a £30,000 budget. “Who decided that a kitchen should cost £40,000-plus? That’s ridiculous,” she fumes.

She ripped out the kitchen and bathroom, all the carpets, and worn floorboards. The flat needed rewiring and re-piping.

In the bathroom, a boxy bespoke glass shower went in. The huge old boiler cupboard hogging the corner became a neat laundry section — “my old house had a whole laundry room, but you just don’t need it.” She put in a combi boiler and stacked the appliances. Her builder laid marble-effect tiles in a herringbone pattern, swish but not expensive. Black taps and globe lights add style.

At the other end of the flat, the small kitchen works really well. Ikea cupboards with cut-out handle slots have been prinked by setting fluorescent-yellow sprayed laminate behind the cut-outs, and a striking sink: “For one client, I put in a stunning copper sink, but on my budget, I got a copper-effect one online for £135.”

She also made a slim central breakfast bar by putting castors on an Ikea open bookcase topped with grey composite like the worktops. All for just £100. Missy loves it.

The other rooms run off a corridor between these two rooms. The balconied drawing room’s thick grey carpet runs throughout: “Use the same carpet and the same wall colour to enlarge space,” Bella says. Well-chosen modern art hangs on the white walls.

She is on a mission to spend money well. “Spend on important things such as paintings, and a good bed and mattress. But you don’t need expensive radiators.”

She got the elegant fire basket for a bargain £25 online, and the stylish charcoal one-fold sofa bed was £200. But by the window in this chic room, a collectable Eero Saarinen Tulip table and chairs has gone through life with her — she’s even danced on it. “Spend on things you will always have and always love,” she says.

The tips continue in the bedroom, where she’s devising a wall of floor-to-ceiling sliding panels for the wardrobe in a statement jungle-print wallpaper. A clever trick is a tallboy made of two stacked Ikea chests of drawers with a piece of reclaimed marble on top. Another is the mix of cushions on the bed: one an expensive velvet printed one, the supporting cast are cheap velvet in rich colours to match.

Did she stick to the budget? In a word, yes; and it was all done in two months.

Bella insists on thinking hard about what you really need and designing your home around that: “Most people have kitchen cupboards full of stuff they never use, because they think they ought to have it, or because other people do. I used to have a six-slot toaster on the worktop, but we don’t eat toast. My principle is, ‘don’t have a toaster if you don’t eat toast’.”

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