Not another 30s semi: inside the eclectic Willesden Green home of designer Alice Palmer

Alice Palmer’s fan base is as eclectic as the products she designs. While songstress Sabrina Carpenter has the playful, stripy Tangier cushions with frilly edges (in iceberg blue), Boris Johnson’s wife Carrie and The White Lotus star Aimee Lou Wood are united in their affection for the box-pleat lampshades.

But #gifted pieces these are not. “The celeb stuff is quite fun. When an order comes in I’ll be like, ‘Oh, look who’s just bought!’” says Palmer, 37.

Her own home in Willesden Green, north-west London, is a liveable showroom chock-full of her own inventory. The aforementioned lampshades in XXL are several to a room, perched on equally enormous ceramic bases, while an array of patterned fabrics invite the eye to wander.

With limewashed walls and colour-drenched window frames, the feeling you get across the three floors is like being whisked away on holiday. “That’s the idea, I like the sun,” explains Palmer.

The creative mother-of-three moved from a terrace she had renovated just a few streets away in Kensal Rise in 2023. This larger semi was in desperate need of love and ideal for Palmer to get her teeth into.

Her desire was for a large eat-in kitchen with a walk-in pantry. By extending out six metres, the impressive space could now rival a small restaurant for covers; there are sofas to relax in, a desk for the kids to sit at and do homework, an island, a central dining table and a fun breakfast nook with banquette seating.

The walls are as exactly as per her old kitchen: raw, builder-grade plaster — but sealed to help withstand sticky hands.

The escapist restaurant feel wasn’t intentional but it’s in Palmer’s blood. Before establishing Alice Palmer & Co from her kitchen table in 2019, Palmer worked in hospitality. She managed several restaurants, including her father’s, Brinkley’s in Chelsea.

She and her two sisters grew up in the flat above on Hollywood Road, SW10. “It was really fun, my parents were quite relaxed,” she says.

She was grateful to pitch up at the family flat during the year-long renovations, but doesn’t pine for the exclusive postcode. “I find it really claustrophobic in Chelsea. Here feels so suburban, which I love. You can hear the birds tweet,” she says.

She also has her parents to thank for numerous artworks dotted around the walls, which she gleefully took ownership of during their short-lived “modern phase”. “Now they want them back,” she says, laughing about the enormous, graphic champagne poster by the breakfast nook.

Palmer started out by stitching her Insta-famous shades when pregnant with her third child, averaging around five a week. As with all great products, they were born of frustration: she found what was on the market too bog-standard or too high-end, and with no room for customisation.

Her box-pleats in vintage fabrics looked smart yet soft, and as she outsourced production to seamstresses in India, the orders grew.

Copycats quickly clipped at her heels, but now she has an exclusive collection of fabrics under her belt and has just launched a range of sheer cottons for curtains.

She adores India and visits once a year, stopping in Delhi and Jaipur, where her range is hand block-printed by artisans. She also has an affection for Morocco: “I just love it, I’ve been going since I was a teenager.”

Influences from the two countries inform the far-flung feel she has curated and are apparent everywhere — even the exotic laundry room. Her Lotus wallpaper transforms the light-starved space into a setting that is more bazaar than banal, aided by cupboards in a glossy red.

“The decorator was not happy — it took five coats,” she remembers. “Shaker cupboard doors are quite boring, so I panelled them with our stripy Tangier wallpaper.”

You get the impression that there was probably a fair bit of eye-rolling and grumbling from Palmer’s crew of tradespeople. After all, not every renovator requests an ogee-shaped door opening instead of a standard door frame.

“I wanted to keep it open and free-flow,” she says of the one between her bedroom and en-suite.

“He [the builder] wasn’t thrilled, and I was like, ‘Oh, there’s another one and another one!’ He was grumpy but secretly I think he quite liked it,” she chuckles.

But these details are what sets Palmer’s home apart from the run of other 1930s semis in the area.

Having trained in interior design post-hospitality, she’s always willing to roll her sleeves up to get the execution right: for said door openings, she printed a template off the internet, then tweaked it to scale for the builder to work from.

In the kitchen, the cabinet fronts are elevated with lattice work from radiator panels. “A really fancy version would be handmade and probably really expensive. But we just painted the back a different colour,” she explains.

The fun crenels which she had cut from MDF and stuck on top certainly aren’t what you’d get in Howdens.

Some details were out of her control, like the zellige tiles she ordered directly from Fez, Morocco, for the walk-in showers.

“You don’t always know what colour they’re going to be when they arrive, so you just have to sort of lean into it a bit.”

Whereas most people would stop at a green chequerboard shower tray, Palmer’s approach is to layer in even more colours for the walls and top it off with printed wallpaper.

For anyone worrying that their next decor move is a little de trop, arm yourself with Palmer’s confidence: “The more patterns, the more it all ties together,” she says.