Joanna Plant’s west London house has been moulded by two decades of family life

“We said, ‘Show us the houses that no one else is really looking at,’” explains Joanna Plant of her search for a home for her young family. “I didn’t really know what the motivation for that was particularly, but I guess we just wanted something that wasn’t the obvious choice.” In 2001, that choice meant a semi-detached 1929 house in Acton, decked out in abominable 1970s décor and boasting a terrifying rockery in the garden. It was, by all accounts, something of an ugly duckling – and yet interior designer Joanna and her husband Nick, who designs and sources furniture and antiques, saw potential in it.

“That style of house, certainly at that time, had not the greatest associations. And I think it’s interesting, because what they have is slightly better spaces for quite a modest house. The hallways are often more generous than very narrow Victorian or Edwardian terraces.” Despite a narrow façade facing onto a quiet, leafy suburban road, the house extends backwards and outwards along a triangular plot, meaning the garden at the back is very wide. Coming from “a tiny-weeny little cottage” with an outdoor courtyard that was “two strides wide”, the couple knew that they’d found the ideal house for two sons who were dying for more garden space. “When walked through to the back, and it had that huge garden, it was a done deal. That was it.”

The garden more than outweighed the 1970s deep-pile pink carpet (“It was so grim,” says Joanna), the electric fires in every room, the brown-and-orange tiles and the tatty linoleum (“A 1970s sitcom kind of aesthetic,” she adds. “All a bit grisly”). The house was given a gradual facelift, the rockery at the back of the house hidden under a shady deck and Joanna’s subtle touch gradually updating and modernising it. “It’s evolved a lot,” she explains, “but it’s been very, very slow, and there was never a plan. I think for that reason, it doesn’t feel decorated, which I find I like at home. I don’t really want to live in an overly coordinated, thought-through [home].”

The Plants’ is a family house, first and foremost. While Joanna admits that the kitchen has been the scene of many a raucous party hosting family and friends, it is the happy mismash of art hanging in the front sitting room that gives the best indication of how the house is full of good memories. “To think of it as a collection makes it sound terribly grand,” she says. “I always look at every picture and know exactly where and when it was bought. Some of them are little more than a postcard, but it’s really nice to look at them and think, ‘Oh, well, I got that when I got that job’ or when travelling on holiday.” One piece hung high on the wall, a drawing of a corvid by one of her sons, is Joanna’s Instagram profile picture. Elsewhere, a couple of Howard Hodgkin works number among her personal favourites.

Asked to summarise the values that she aims for in her professional work, Joanna promptly names comfort, timelessness and “a touch of glamour”, and all three can be seen in the house, where she occasionally experiments with ideas to use in work projects. Her inspiration is wide-ranging. “I think I look to the Georgians for the bones: proportion and detail,” she says of her process. “I look at the 1920s and 30s for glamour. And then I think I probably go to the old-school Americans for the practical comfort – Nancy Lancaster.” On the first floor, one of the bedrooms is decorated similarly to the one Joanna designed for Design Centre Chelsea Harbour’s WOW!House industry showcase in June, with a 1940s Spanish bed with ornamental iron flowers comprising the centrepiece and curtains by Tissus d’Hélène. Likewise, over the staircase, a beautiful English crewelwork hanging was salvaged from another project; another like it now hangs in a farmhouse she worked on in Ibiza. Throughout the house there are subtle reminders of her eye for detail.