Craig David’s north-London penthouse is so slick, it could be a set for one of his videos. With 4,000 sq ft of space, a glossy grand piano, acres of cream leather sofas and great vases of blood-red amaryllis, all it’s missing are the scantily clad models – although they are in evidence, gyrating in cutout swimwear as screen-savers on plasma-screen televisions or graphic art on the walls.

Ruthlessly contemporary and high-tech, the home of the R&B prodigy is, as you might expect, very bling. Fingerprint-pad entry, intricate LED lighting systems and crystal encrusted pictures work together to create a home that perfectly suits the soul sensation who has sold 13m records to date.

David, 27, achieved success in 2000 with his first album, Born to Do It, which reached multi-platinum status in 20 countries. His first priority was to buy his mum – whom he famously adores, and who raised him on a Southampton council estate – her own home. After that, he was ready to invest for himself, not fritter his earnings away. “I realised just having money in your account looks great, but it gives you the temptation to spend money on other stuff, like clothes and trainers,” he says.

So, in 2002, the one-time ragga radio DJ – barely out of his teens – bought himself the £2.5m show flat in a 19th-century blue-plaque development on Hampstead Heath. “I was bouncing between here and America at that time,” he says, “and wasn’t really sure what I wanted to buy. I didn’t know London well, but I was doing all my promotion here. I went out on to one of the terraces here and saw the views and just thought it was incredible. From the penthouse, it felt like the view was all my own.”

And David – who from his teens has had his career seemingly micromanaged by his record company and publicist – was going to make sure he had his first place set up exactly how he wanted it. After gutting most of the eight rooms, which are set off a seemingly endless corridor in the eaves of the mansion, and replastering, he created a two-bedroom home out of a three-bedder, making the third a dressing room. “I was a single guy, and didn’t need three bedrooms,” he says. “I knew I could convert it back any time I wanted to sell.”

A self-confessed perfectionist – “I’m as pedantic about my home as my music” – David stayed in hotels until the last stick of furniture had arrived before moving in, one and a half years after buying it. “Everything has to be absolutely correct,” he says. “I was in that mode of owning a place for the first time – I hand-picked everything, going to B&B Italia, John Lewis, Chelsea antiques shops and The Conran Shop.”

The end result is very much a one-man show. “Wherever I live, I try to create my own space. Even when I was staying in hotels, I would change round furniture and put my own stamp on it. And here, I wanted to create a real bachelor pad: a lot of the stuff I go for is rugged and raw.” David, a seemingly unlikely nester, whose wealth has been estimated in The Sunday Times Rich List this year at about £10m, also employed the services of an interior designer, London-based Gary Knibbs. “He brought in a more feminine touch; he understood how to balance things.”

The heart and soul of the flat, and a clue to David’s passions, is the living area, a snug, womb-like space: “This is where I lounge and where my friends come to play on the Xbox.” A large plasma-screen television takes centre-stage, facing a cream L-shaped sofa draped with piles of pale fur rugs.

Ragwork floor cushions, sheepskin rugs and tall ceramic and glass vases of silk roses “keep things soft”. Big bowls of Galaxy and Lindt chocolates sit on glass tables, as they do all over the flat.

Chocolate is an obsession – though very much a childhood weakness. Newly buff from a punishing daily regime in his home gym, David says he likes to watch others tucking in, sticking mainly to a diet of grilled chicken salad himself.

Bespoke etched-leatherwork portraits by the London-based artist Mark Evans cover the room’s walls. A pantheon of David’s musical icons is displayed: slain hip-hop icons Tupac Shakur and The Notorious BIG; and Mary J Blige, whose enormous hoop earrings are created from inlaid Swarovski crystals. “I wanted to push things a bit further, to get a bit of bling back into things,” he says.

For entertaining big parties, David uses the vast cream drawing room, where he has his decks set up so he can practise his DJing skills – though he says he “doesn’t like to hammer it. I have respect for my neighbours”. In the summer, guests can spill out onto the room’s enormous green Astroturfed balcony. “This is what really turned me on to the place,” he says, pointing out a swanky decked area covered in waterproof cream cushions. “You can make those into one huge bed and watch movies on an outdoor screen.”

But it’s really the high-tech gadgets that excite David. “I’m always trying to push the technology side of things,” he says. “That’s what all this LED business is about.” At one touch of the drawing room’s system panel, the decorative, twinkling pink LED rocks in the fireplace turn blue. “I’ve got complete control,” he says. “I can programme the whole house: certain rooms in certain colours, plus sound and lighting levels.”

David – who these days sports a shaved, clean-cut look – loves to play with the lighting down the flat’s long corridor, where a central, horizontal line of LEDs spark up and down each wall, so the floors, walls and ceilings are bathed in blue and green. The effect is like being on an airport runway at night. “It makes the transition from nightclub to home a bit easier when I get in late at night,” he says.

Unsurprisingly, David is a dab hand in the small studio he has set up here: he records his own soul-ful vocals and plays his MP3s off another set of sparkling silver decks for sampling. Here, shelves groan under Ivor Novello songwriting awards, a reminder of how far David has come since since his breakthrough in 1999, singing on Artful Dodger’s garage hit ReRewind. Now, with four albums under his belt, he is keen to win a Brit. “I take a lot of awards down to my mum’s,” he says.

David, brought up in cramped quarters, is tidy to a fault. His two-part dressing room has perfectly filed designer jeans, scores of white D&G shirts, and box upon box of Adidas Superstar and Diesel trainers. And a boy’s domain it is going to stay. His new London-based girlfriend – whose name he coyly won’t reveal – had better be neat. “If she’s going to come into my dwelling, she’s got to respect it the way it is,” he says, only half-joking. “Or else there’ll be clothes and hair gel everywhere.” Complete control over his environment: just the way he likes it.

Doesn’t he feel a long way from the action in the gentrified lanes of Hampstead? “I’m only 15 minutes’ drive away from the West End here, so I can be as deep in it as I want,” he says. And if it gets too sedate, he can always escape to Miami, the city that has become his second home and chief party destination. He has recently bought one of the tower suites – which have price tags of up to £2.5m – in the high-rise Mondrian South Beach hotel-residence at Biscayne Bay, interior-designed by Dutch trendsetter Marcel Wanders. “The vibe, the atmosphere, the scene there come to you. It’ll be very funky.”

His life now seems far away from the Holyrood estate in Southampton. “There’s a bit of me that misses it, actually,” he says. “I feel privileged to have lived there. It’s amazing to think my music, something that I am so passionate about, has allowed me a home in London. It makes me feel so happy that the hard work all paid off.”

He flicks the corridor’s uplights to green, then back to blue and red again. A big kid in his very own sweet shop.

Craig David’s new single, Officially Yours, is out on June 16. His fourth album, Trust Me, is out now, on Warner Music; www.craigdavid.com. His UK tour starts on June 13

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