We’ve all seen the state rooms at Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace, in photographs if not in real life, but what about the apartments the royals actually reside in, day to day? Does King Charles’ love for gardening extend to chintz furnishings? Would the royals ever have mooched around the Design Centre at Chelsea Harbour together – or are their tastes just too different?
The Covid lockdowns, and the introduction of Zoom, gave us some insight, while two of the then Duke and Duchess of Cornwall’s homes – Llwynywermod in Wales and Restormel Manor in Cornwall – have been photographed for House & Garden.
Then there’s the slew of films and television series – from Spencer to The Crown – which aren’t entirely inaccurate. And then there’s Tina Brown’s book, The Palace Papers, which concentrated on the period from Princess Diana’s tragic death to now. Between them, certain stylistic differences can be established, variously informed by the era, tradition, childhoods, and personal choice.
The late Queen and Prince Philip ‘were trained to be wartime thrifty,’ reported Tina. She recounted a story told to her by a former girlfriend of the then Prince Charles, who arrived at Windsor Castle for tea to find that the Queen had been going through the heating bills and was concerned that she was being overcharged. Effectively, Her Majesty’s approach was both make do and mend and admirably sustainable. Tina described her proclivities towards turning off lights, shredding old newspapers for use as bedding for her horses, saving and re-using parcel string, and told how, at Balmoral, ‘any damage to the walls is patched up by wallpaper bought more than a century ago by Queen Victoria.’
Nor was anything needlessly replaced – Cherie Blair, wife of Tony, memorably compared the electric heater in the Prime Minister’s suite at Balmoral to one owned by her grandmother, both in look and age. Meanwhile Prince Philip, who once gave his Savile Row tailor a 51-year-old pair of trousers to be altered, was possibly also influenced by his somewhat rootless upbringing and his naval career. His ‘study in his private quarters at Wood Farm, the house on the Sandringham Estate where he spent much of his retirement years, was as minimal and uncluttered as the boardroom of a ship,’ wrote Tina.
King Charles, we know, is also fervent when it comes to sustainability. However, according to Tina, that goes hand in hand with an enthusiasm for grandeur. Well documented is the lack of enjoyment he found in the austerity of his school days at Gordonstoun, also pertinent is the close relationship he had with his grandmother, the late Queen Mother, who grew up in the age of Edwardian splendour. Right to the end, she maintained five fully furnished and staffed residences.
In London, she lived in the four-storey, 19th-century Clarence House, next to St. James’s Palace, where the Queen and and Prince Philip lived pre-Buckingham Palace; cast your mind back to season one of The Crown, and you’ll remember the young Prince Philip, as played by Matt Smith, overseeing its redecoration.
According to Tina, when it was mooted as an idea for the Queen Mother when she was moving out of Buckingham Palace, she (the QM) referred to it as a ‘horrid little house‘ and spent a fortune remodelling it again. As for the style, ‘in her bedroom, two cherubs on her four-poster bed had their angel’s clothes washed and starched every month.‘ It is now where King Charles and Queen Camilla live, when in London. Earlier this year it was announced that they will not move into Buckingham Palace when £369m of building works to update it are completed next year.
King Charles grew up at Buckingham Palace, and as a bachelor, his apartment was decorated by designer du jour David Hicks who famously turned English interior design on its head with his bold modernist vision that rejected any hint of chintz or prettiness. Marriage to Princess Diana came with a move to Kensington Palace, where the young Princess employed the South African interior designer Dudley Poplak to update the rooms – she had already contracted him to decorate Highgrove, which the then-Prince Charles had bought in 1980.
Poplak (sadly for us) was the last word in discretion, however The Times described the Highgrove scheme in his obituary as ‘a youthful variant of the chintzy country-house look that was seen everywhere that year. With a palette of clean, fresh colours – plenty of lime green and aquamarine – he created a gentle, relaxed mood with no flights of fancy other than the odd experiment with interesting textures’. At Kensington Palace, there was plenty of patterned wallpaper, complete with matching borders, pink sofas and chairs with box-pleated skirts, and elaborately trimmed and swagged curtains–all very pretty, and all very much of its time.
It wasn’t long before Charles had Highgrove redecorated by Robert Kime; a natural sewage system and solar panels were also installed. Kime was renowned for his impeccable layering of textiles and treasures, which is something that Charles is also keen on when it comes to entertaining. Tina described a dinner at Highgrove for which the controversial aide Michael Fawcett ‘ransacked the vaults of St. James’s Palace and found crates of plates, candlesticks, and napery given to the monarch over the centuries dating back to Catherine the Great.’ (In contrast, the late Queen’s idea of a festive look for Christmas at Sandringham was said to be ‘a bare table with no cloth and a poinsettia placed in the middle.’)
With marriage to Camilla, the interior designer Annabel Elliot – Camilla’s sister – came to the fore. Looking at the projects she undertook for Charles (among them the interiors of Restormel Manor), they were less reliant on chintz than on comfort, twinned with a real interest in local craft. Reading between the lines (or rather, occasional stripes) it might be safe to say that the Diana years were a period Charles allowed his wife to make the decorating decisions.
The new Prince and Princess of Wales have a very different relationship, having been together since university; in such marriages, when it comes to taste, it can be hard to know where the line lies between sea and sky. But certainly Prince William’s aesthetics developed quite fast after meeting Kate. At Eton, Tina recounted, the 17-year-old Prince’s room featured a poster ‘of a spaced-out Rastafarian flying through the clouds with a spliff in his mouth, coupled with the slogan “Don’t drink and drive, have a smoke and fly.”’ Two or three years later, he and Kate were living in a rented cottage just outside St. Andrews and ‘William installed a polished mahogany table that seated 17 and a well-stocked wine fridge,‘ said Tina. (The ‘17’ sounds slightly odd for a regular-shaped table.)
Ben Pentreath was behind the interiors at Anmer Hall, the Prince and Princess of Wales's Norfolk retreat (their main residence is Forest Lodge in Windsor Great Park), of which very little has been seen. Knowing Ben, it’s possible to conjure up images of well-lit rooms full of beautiful antiques, punctuated with pattern and, perhaps, colour – although, looking at the Kensington Palace apartment, there might be a preference for neutrals.
Photographs from a visit from the Obamas showed warm creams and beiges alongside an octagonal ottoman and a glorious bullion fringe trimmed sofa. There were exceptional paintings loaned from the Royal Collection (Catherine, Princess of Wales studied Art History), many lamps and framed family photographs – and we’ve heard tell of there being IKEA furniture in the children’s bedrooms. The apparent contemporary attitude to a high-low mix is backed up when you look at how Catherine dresses and remember her tendency to pop into John Lewis (as well as the Design Centre).
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex – by all accounts – is said to prefer Soho Home, and those who remember her Tig days will also remember her love of pale décor, cosy throws, curated collections of coffee table books, and scented candles. She and Harry hired former Soho House designer Vicky Charles to decorate Frogmore Cottage, but given the backlash they received for spending £5,000 on a William Holland copper bath and installing a yoga studio, it’s hardly surprising that we’ve since seen almost nothing of their interiors, save for the occasional virtual glimpse on Netflix post-decamp to California in 2023. But these were enough to give away such details as an Hermès blanket, striped cushions and monochrome artwork – the overall effect more West Coast casual than country house classic. It’s easy to assume that Meghan was responsible for all of it (especially if you examine photos of her Toronto home, pre-Harry) but more probable is that Harry simply didn’t have significant interest – which was backed up by Tina’s description of his tenure of Nottingham Cottage; apparently, it was never very tidy.
In the great game of musical palaces, William and Catherine moved to Windsor, while King Charles and Queen Camilla appear to be spending most of their time at Clarence House. What’s clear is that there’s going to be plenty of work for the top British interior designers going forward, and that, when it comes to their private quarters, royal taste does not differ too much from ours – they just have better attics (or ‘vaults’) to ransack. It’s that relatability that makes it so compulsive.
