Inside Dichen Lachman and Maximilian Osinski's colourful Victorian house in Chiswick

The actors Dichen Lachman (Severance) and Maximilian Osinski (Ted Lasso) came to west London to film and meant to stay only briefly. Then Lachman spotted a listing mid-workout: a three-bedroom Victorian house four minutes from their Chiswick gym, barely touched since the 1970s. Osinski agreed to buy it without viewing it, having seen a house down the street by architect Charlotte Lilford, a fellow parent at their daughter's school.

Lilford, who works between London and Paris, extended the loft and ground floor, reworked the layout and reinstated lost Victorian details. She starts with how a family actually lives, but colour is plainly her thing. The hall pairs terracotta walls with a mustard storage banquette and a reshaped staircase; the kitchen has a marble counter and a raffia wall covering Lachman calls nonnegotiable; an upstairs cinema is wrapped in Élitis jungle wallpaper, inspired by the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York.

Outside, the small courtyard gets a marble wave mosaic that runs indoors. Lilford's reasoning: the smaller the garden, the more you need to spend on it. Family pieces fill the rooms, from a 19th-century tapestry that belonged to Lachman's Tibetan grandmother to Osinski's Polish circus posters.

A private home, so one for reading rather than visiting, but useful for anyone wondering how far to push pattern in a modest London terrace.

Our summary of a story from Architectural Digest, published 7 October 2026. Read the original

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