Maura McLaughlin’s house – a handsome, redbrick semi-detached-detached in Dublin – has been known to stop passersby in their tracks. “Sometimes, if I’m running to and from the house, unloading things from the car, and I’ve left the front door open, I do see people walk past, then walk back to take another look,” she says.
They will have caught a glimpse of McLaughlin’s deep, dusky magenta hallway, which has been laid with geometric tiles and has a huge starburst chandelier hanging above a lozenge-shaped, luxuriously upholstered bench. Perhaps they’ve also noticed that the treads of the stairs have been covered in floral wallpaper. “That was my ‘wow’ moment – when I walked into the house after the hallway had been painted,” McLaughlin recalls.
McLaughlin bought the house in 2018 after a year-long search. “I was a bit of a Goldilocks about it,” she admits. “I wanted somewhere spacious, but it had to be somewhere that wasn’t too big for just myself.” What sheeventually found was an Edwardian house that had a “natural, circular flow” to it; a home in which to settle indefinitely. She then enlisted the help of a professional interior designer to make it “just right”.
McLaughlin, who is a partner at an international law firm, came across Róisín Lafferty (founder of Kingston Lafferty Designand one of Ireland’s leading interior designers) quiteby chance. When she firstsaw her portfolio, she breathed a sigh of relief: “I could see that they did big ideas and bold colours, but their homes were completely liveable, too.”
The house was in good condition when McLaughlin moved in but, she says, “It had been decorated in pretty much one colour – and that colour was cream.” The brief she gave Lafferty was inspired by her travels to Morocco. “I had a clear vision that I wanted something glamorous and colourful, warm and welcoming. Róisín did a fantastic job of transforming all that into moodboards and, ultimately, into the house itself.”
Work began on the house in 2019 and took a year to complete and McLaughlin remains “in awe” of what Lafferty and her team have achieved. Structurally, the ground floor was unaltered. Upstairs, they knocked through two of the five bedrooms to create a master suite. “I now have this lovely bedroom with a walk-in wardrobe of dreams, and an ensuite bathroom with a free-standing bath. One thing Róisín was adamant about,” continues McLaughlin, “was that the space should be designed not for resale value, but for how I want to use it.” There are two guest bedrooms, and a fourth room that has been transformed into a home office.
On the ground floor, the kitchen – which occupies a narrow room at the rear of the property – has been fitted with bespoke cabinetry and painted in deep aubergine. Brass and glass display cabinets bookend the work surfaces and a carapace of jewel-toned tiles encloses the area. A built-in wine cooler occupies what was a disused fireplace, adding to the opulence. “It may sound like a mundane detail,” says McLaughlin, “but the entire kitchen is made up of easy-access drawers rather than cupboards, which makes it incredibly practical, not just glamorous.”
The end section of the room overlooks the rear garden, which has been inspired by the Jardin Majorelle in Marrakech. “This was originally set up as an informal dining area,” says McLaughlin, “but there wasalready another dining room next door, so we decided to turn this into a relaxed seating area.”
A circular, inlaid marble floor creates a focal point, while the curved back of the peacock-blue sofa prevents the space from feeling like a narrow thoroughfare. “It encourages people to experience the space, rather than just walk through it on the way to the garden,” says McLaughlin. “That’s one of the things that has reallypleased me about the house. I feel that everywhere you turn, there’s a detail that is interesting or different. It allows you to engage in the space in so many different ways.”
In the formal dining room, Lafferty has designed and installed bespoke panelling in high-gloss blue. The fireplace and dining table have been painted bright red and the floor laid with tiles that cleverly straddle the Moroccan/Edwardian aesthetic. The curved detail in the panelling is continued in the built-in bar area and echoed in the brass display cabinet. “This is probably my favourite room in the house,” says McLaughlin. “Sitting here on a summer evening with the doors open to the garden and the light bouncing around the walls – it’s just a lovely space to be in. It almost makes my cooking seem glamorous…”
In the main living room, a combination of high-street and vintage furniture gives the house a sense of having evolved over time when, in fact, McLaughlin moved in with “40 boxes of books, loads of paintings and prints, and one armchair”.
“Pretty soon after I moved in, I had my whole work team over for drinks,” McLaughlin recalls. “Someone commented that, despite the interiors being brand new and perfectly finished, it looked as though I’d lived here for years. That, to me, was the result ofwhat I felt was a really successful collaboration.”
