As a pre-teen in the early 1970s, I loved playing at my best friend Georgeanne’s house. We spent afternoons pretending to make cocktails behind her parents’ home bar. They had a tiny sink and mini-fridge, and we’d sit hunched over on their black vinyl bar stools, cramming olives, pickled onions and maraschino cherries onto toothpicks and floating them in wine glasses full of worcester sauce and Sprite.
Alas, those bars of yesteryear eventually disappeared. People started to entertain less at home as more women joined the workforce, and decent cocktails became available at pubs and at good restaurants. When Georgeanne’s parents renovated, the flocked velvet wallpaper and shag-pile carpet disappeared, and so did the bar. It became something far more utilitarian: a laundry.
Style experts, though, say home bars are making a comeback — minus the tacky 1970s wood panelling and mirrored cabinet doors. “There’s a sort of martini and cocktail revival, which has become a staple of people’s leisure time. It’s trip-switched a requirement to create a bar ambience in people’s homes,” says Jane Faust, spokesperson for luxury housebuilder Octagon. It has built “wet bars” (with sinks) in teenage dens on the top floor of large houses, or alongside home swimming-pool complexes. “These bars have the little refrigerator, the ice-making machine, the sink and the shelves with shatter-proof glasses, especially if they’re poolside,” Faust says.
The home-bar business has picked up considerably in the past five years, says Jonathan Green of Woking-based Quench, which makes modern, high-end cocktail bars.
“They had bad PR, due to certain television shows like Only Fools and Horses,” he says. “But once you get to a certain age, you might not want to venture to a nightclub in the town centre where there is a lot of antisocial behaviour. Instead, you may prefer having people over for drinks and cocktails.”
Quench advertises bars for up to £895 on its website, and Green has been surprised at how varied his customer base has become. “We thought it would be only wealthy City types, but we have all ages and incomes buying from us,” he says. “We go in little two-up, two-downs as well as huge great new seven-bed luxury homes.”
Cheaper options are also available. Usave.tv, for example, does a fold-down wood and brass Prague bar with antique-style handles that comes with an eight-piece stainless steel cocktail set for £400; Bar Gizmos does a portable bar moulded in black plastic with panel claddings in cherry-wood effect for £1,795.
Wealthy homeowners are also tapping in to the home-bar resurgence, often because their houses are so large they find it difficult to get into the kitchen. Madonna has commissioned one for her New York home.
“There’s a revival because people want to entertain but they don’t want staff in the house, and they also don’t want to be at the other side of the house carting drinks left, right and centre. And of course, you want to be able to tip remnants into a sink,” says London-based interior designer Helen Green, who designs top-end private homes, hotels and yachts.
“Home bars were hip in the 1970s, but naff in the 1980s and 1990s, a complete no-no. But styles have changed and the ones we make now are glamorous and sophisticated,” she says. “I have one at home, in the drawing room on the third floor of our townhouse. It’s in a very chic, minuscule cupboard lined in leather. It’s not tacky in the slightest.”
Emma O’Reilly added one to a small alcove off her living room when she and her husband, Ethan, renovated their five-storey house in Hampstead, north London, two years ago. “Our kitchen is on the ground floor so we needed a second sink to make drinks. All our alcoholic mixes are upstairs in the bar, and when we entertain, we entertain in that area,” says O’Reilly, 40. The bar has walnut cupboards for cocktail accessories and glasses, a small stainless-steel sink and a fridge. “We didn’t want the cupboard outside where it would be visible to everyone. It’s more subtle hidden inside the home bar — you go into a small room and it has its own niche. It’s out of the way and discreet.”
Building a bar can pay off — if you get the right one — if you want to sell. “Anything with a good fitting, whether it’s a wet bar or a second bathroom, will appeal to the market and add value,” says Lucy Crawford, head of sales at Mountgrange Heritage estate agency in Notting Hill. “A lot of people remove a bedroom to create an extra sitting room, which becomes a party room for entertaining. Saying that, I saw one recently in the outhouse in a garden, next to the hot tub.”
Property developer Paul White has just fitted a home bar in his large, detached house in Vicarage Heights, Essex. An entire side of the house has been turned into a large leisure room with pool, spa and pool table, and a stainless-steel bar from Quench completes the effect. It cost about £6,000.
“It was definitely money well spent,” White says. “We use it when people come round, as it’s much nicer than going back to the kitchen to have a drink.” His three children, aged 6, 9 and 12, love it too. “When I’m playing pool they turn all the ultraviolet lights on and get behind it, pretending they’re mixing cocktails,” he says. “All kids love working behind a bar.” Reminds me of my childhood
Octagon, 020 7479 7850, www.octdev.co.uk; Helen Green, 020 7352 3344, www.helengreendesign.com; Quench, 01483 740 455, www.quench.info; Mountgrange Heritage, 020 7221 2277, www.mountgrangeheritage.co.uk; Usave.tv, 08700 670 123, www.usave.tv; Bar Gizmos, 01952 618 877, www.bargizmos.co.uk
