Inside David Harbour & Lily Allen's Brooklyn Townhouse | Open Door | Architectural Digest

oh god, what are you doing here? I mean, last time he was single and living on the Lower East Side. Now I have a family, children. I mean, this is so embarrassing. You look well. Come on, this is our kitchen, our simple English. cooking when I met Lily Allen for the first time we went on a date one point you told me you wanted to always wanted to play in English cooking it would be quite forward on a first date to say hello nice to meet you the way simple English is the name of I liked the kitchen.

I thought, "Okay, let's do this" when we started this design process with designer Billy Cotton, unaware of the budget, one of the things he had was called Italian Layered, that was the theme of the design. and was based a bit on The Godfather movies. The fact is, this particular neighborhood in Brooklyn is an old Italian neighborhood and we liked the idea of ​​incorporating that aesthetic. We wanted a place to feel like the kind of central engine of the house. When you walk in, there's a big table to leave the shopping for the kids, do their homework over there, I cook, everyone abandons me, check this out too, these crazy chandeliers became a focal point for us and once that came up chandelier, that idea of ​​a chandelier arose.

With the moldings, which are the actual moldings from the original building, my big priority for this room is that I just wanted the light to bounce off all the walls and feel very luxurious and warm and functional. I'm also really excited that you guys came today. Because I've been baking this sourdough all day, I'm so happy to be here to share. Are Cream Donuts edible? Yeah, I mean, I baked them this morning. I hope they are edible. I'll have one of these this morning. The house was designed for three women in my life who I love dearly, but I bought several things that were just mine, the coffee station.

The nice thing about this little coffee station is that it has a hot water faucet that has hot and cold water. water on demand, which is something I always wanted in a house. I also hate drinking water and found that having the hot water tap encourages me to drink, it's tea, but strictly speaking it's water. I am able to stay hydrated solely thanks to that faucet for the first time in my life this house is actually improving my health my physical health this is great this completely non-functional oh wait no no I don't want to talk about this I want to talk about this when I thought this It's part of Billy Cotton's genius.

I'll say the week I was here when we were building this and we saw this and I got scared and thought, what is this doing here? stupid, we don't want this here, we have lights in the house and he said: no, no, don't mess with that, that's my time and we let him get on with his thing. I'll say he's a genius because and you just walk away. that light gives a little street lamp effect, you know, there's something quite magical and beautiful, romantic, yeah, coming down in the morning or whatever, coming down late at night and seeing that little light on, it's also very low voltage, like that yeah, super cool, should we? go to the next room, this is the garden room, we have this double sided sofa, which means David and I can argue and look at each other and then look away at the same time, behind these beautiful flowers there is a large fireplace. room in particular, the way it was shaping up because of the wallpaper and the colors and the different things it became a real eyesore, even this beautiful mantel, so Billy had this great idea about this weird modern box, it's a really cool wallpaper from a company.

They are called zubair, they are incredible. I try to stay away from his store because I walk in and you can flip through his books and you know I just want every wallpaper and none of them fit. This is all. It is hand painted, beautiful, some of the small. touches like lighting things in here are so cool we play board games here and read books and play on the iPad and sit on our phones and check Instagram all that foreign nonsense I say I just had coffee stations where I demanded certain things this floor is like a couple of necessary items and I said I need Swan faucets and I also wanted a refrigerator from outer space and I got everything I wanted in pink no less than when I lived in apartments in New York City I only had bathrooms and there was a toilet , a shower, a sink and a toothbrush and now I have a room where you can bathe or sit or you can brush your teeth and do whatever you want in this room and there is a carpet in this room and beautiful wallpaper Again by zubair Cotton and the rug by Pierre Frey you wanted flowers and they delivered them to you baby and this is the swan tap if those guys are swans too no, yeah this is the OG swan, this is the big swan, that's the big one, the big daddy Swan, yeah, we came up with this design as if we wanted a Parisian feeling somewhere where you could feel like you were reading quizzes and smoking jitons in the bathtub or something we bought.

These are auctions and they are toilets that You have these marble tops, you know, and we turned them into the attached swan faucets. In reality, they are copies of toilets that were in Versailles. They combine very well with our sexually transmitted diseases embroidery. I've had that since I. I know you, by the way, it's amazing, welcome to the bedroom A.D, this is our bedroom, it's cool because there are no windows in this section, so there are windows in the bathroom and then there are windows in the closet. David likes to sleep in it in the mornings and he doesn't like natural light because he's a vampire too, so we can close these

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s and he can sit here and sleep, we'll watch TV until two in the office, yeah, it's great when you design.

However, a room without windows because I think what you have to do is highlight that feature and what you do is make the bedroom just a place for a couple of activities that you don't know about, so you just make it very well known as a cocoon almost um and these are the sliding

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s that come in now it's a bedroom we have little lights here little reading nook I also love these things like mini chandeliers I don't even know what that's called as a lighting fixture and there's the You know some flamingos that you've had for a long time and that my dad gave me.

You know, one of the cool things about having a smaller bed area is that you can make your closet or your wife's closet larger than the bedroom area. Um, this is like I don't know if you've had good closets in the past, right? Nothing like this, this is incredible, yes, in fact, it was built by a Brazilian company called Florence, who we are very grateful to for doing a great job. Good job, everything is like panels that are attached to the walls, it is very functional and very beautiful. I am very happy that this is also a kind of gathering area.

You and the girls try things on. It's a great little space. This is my closet. It's going to be a little tighter than in Lily's closet, but come on, it's black. I love it. It's not anyone else's favorite room in the house, but I really love it. They also set it up as a small desk. Over here, I'm still trying to figure out this area, but I have my little journal. I'm an analog guy, whenever I feel particularly good about myself I like to always remember where I came from here, we are what we do. you call this floor they call it first floor that's what I find the strangest thing about Americans is that zero is one it's the ground floor um coming from the street you just go down a couple of steps you come in here again this is that painting we're talking about from the kitchen that we use here because on these floors you tend to have less light and what you want is to take natural lights, but have them flow through this hallway and one of the ways you can do that.

I mean, with a kind of brighter paint, the light bounces in a certain way, this is my favorite look in the house, it's very different from other things, this is our, you know, like you don't have a bathroom in the kitchen, so I have to run over here to pee and um, this is, uh, this is like something out of The Sopranos or something. It's great, a very strange wallpaper like a black toilet. I always wanted a black toilet and I have one because I'm an adult, this is wild, this was a real creation of my wife, she said "I really want to make a tiger print rug" and I was like no one, some print rugs a little crazy and then she said, "Well, I was like, how about another couch?" He's like tiger prints.

I thought that's ridiculous and it is and it's already been done, it's great. I love this room. I love it too, but it's very relaxing. I mean, this couch is great. um, this is kind of a media room. We're lucky to have that garden room where we don't have a TV, it's more like reading board games and then this is our media room where we just go downstairs and watch TV. I love the fireplace here, um, they came up. with an awesome design the stone is this Darker stone I love the Hutch wood I even love these weird little lights uh above the couch I hate them I know you hate let's get rid of them I like them I like these lights that don't They really don't do anything, but they're weird, I feel like I'm on a plane or something, so it's just a place where we come, you know, just watch TV, watch TV, watch a movie after dinner and stuff, it's really nice.

We take you outside, uh, yeah, I'm down, you guys want to get in the sauna, come on, come on, let's go out in the back. I want to show you this cool thing, this is really cool, so the puff house company built these cool little structures and it was crazy how fast they did it, but this is the outside door, oh, big and heavy, and look at this, It's a finishing sauna, you know, it's just a little bit, just sitting here with a book and stuff, but I actually got into the sauna and soaked in cold water like three. years ago and then you know, since you have one, since you have one, you might as well have a sweltering house, oh, build yourself the other one, it's just a cold pool, uh, very simple, just a bucket of cold water, but it It gets cold in here, but I love it, just coming and going, it's a really nice little space in here for me, so it's great, okay, bye, thanks for barging in, thanks for coming, don't let the door hit you on the way out , I love you.