A Georgian townhouse in Bath thoughtfully renovated by paint specialist Cassandra Ellis

Cassandra’s approach to renovation inside the house is a thoughtful take on ‘less is more’. She actively avoids the ‘peak perfection’ look, where buildings are taken back to brick and freshly plastered, regardless of whether it is actually needed. ‘You just need to do as little damage and removal as you possibly need to,’ she advises. The original lath and plaster ceiling in the kitchen is a good example, which she retained and had skimmed. In the bathroom next to the kitchen, cheap tiles and layers of lino were removed to reveal the original flagstone floor in what would have been the old butler’s room. ‘This room was non-functioning for about the past 20 years,’ she explains. ‘We just lime plastered the walls, painted the ceiling, put this old bath in, and that’s all it needed,’ says Cassandra. ‘It’s a really beautiful room.’ Fireplaces throughout, including in this bathroom, were opened up and largely left as they found them.

The most torturous task was steaming off sheets of wallpaper and constantly testing it to see if there was lead in it. In the main bedroom, they steamed the walls and ceiling, unearthing the original 1767 ceiling. ‘We just left it as we found it in the original lime plaster,’ she explains. ‘People are so used to covering everything up and seeing finishes rather than materials, but I like to keep them exposed,’ she explains. It’s an approach she also takes with antique furniture, often taking them back to the frame and leaving them in raw calico.

Her love of materials and things in their raw state run throughout the house, even in the more contemporary form of the kitchen, where industrial feeling stainless steel units, made by Cavendish Equipment, are complemented by a limecrete floor. ‘The old flagstones had been ruined by previous owners, but we left them there and added a breathable membrane before applying limecrete,’ explains Cassandra. The kitchen units were another practical choice when Cassandra realised that the existing wooden kitchen – a look she’s not particularly on anyway – was rotting due to the moisture in the basement. ‘This one will never be compromised by damp wicking in and out of the building and will last easily for 50 years,’ she explains. ‘It was about longevity.’

When it comes to the decoration of the house, Cassandra has a firm stance: ‘a house shouldn’t be a container for decoration, but a container for people to choose how they want to live,’ she explains. She might be a colourist, but in her own house she veers towards calmer, quieter palettes as an antidote to a ‘busy mind’. ‘When I do colour work for other people, I always start with the person and see it as 50% person and 50% house,’ she explains. This house is east-west facing and many of her colours she had used in her previous apartment in London just did not work. ‘The house wanted a softer palette of browns, whites, blues and pinks that wouldn’t compete with the golden buildings outside.’ As such, the main bedroom is painted in her best-selling warm ‘Tea & Toast’ – ‘a winning colour,’ she says – while the adjoining bedroom is in ‘Milk’.

On the top floor, she painted the ceiling in a bespoke colour that resembles the colour of the sky in Bath with its ‘golden dustiness’. The palette is light, apart from in the library – a room the couple love to read in on a Sunday afternoon with a bottle of champagne – where she has painted walls, ceiling and built-in bookcases in ‘Fallen Plum’. ‘It sums up me up brilliantly as it’s ancient and modern and alive, and I love how you can’t quite tell whether it’s brown, black or plum,’ says Cassandra, who painted the whole house herself using a 4-inch brush.

The furniture is a mix of pieces the couple have owned for years and more recent purchases, but there is the sense that they all are imbued with memories. The sofa in the sitting room, for example, Cassandra designed years ago in a past life when she was making furniture. ‘I will die before she does,’ she says, with a smile. Their quiet four-poster bed has also been with them for many years, after they bought it from The Conran Shop. ‘If I’m buying new, it has to be very well made.’ There is a good spattering of vintage too – an Osvaldo Borsani coffee table that she bought from 8 Holland Street just before they moved to Bath and Charlotte Perriand ‘Applique à Volet Pivotant’ lights that ‘push the light around beautifully’. Objects, such as the beautiful moon vase in the sitting room, stand for more than just an aesthetic choice – they represent moments in the couple's lives. ‘That vase was so expensive and we were so broke, and now everytime I look at it, I think about how far we’ve come.’

Cassandra’s motto for life is that she never wants to stop growing and the next stage, in fact, is a move back to London. She has closed the shop in Bath, taken on a two and a half thousand square feet studio in Bermondsey and is back on the hunt for a house – no doubt with a select few streets on her radar. ‘Moving to Bath worked brilliantly, but I never want to stop developing and seeking,’ she explains. ‘The business has grown hugely and since 80% of our orders are in London, it makes sense for us to be back there. And I can’t wait to be a 20 minute cycle on my bike from the Tate’. While they will, of course, be taking their possessions with them, the new owners of this house should be just fine. ‘Every place we’ve lived still feels alive when we take our things out and leave,’ says Cassandra. ‘It’s what happens when you let a building feel at peace with itself.’

atelierellis.co.uk