A few streets behind the multicultural mix of Uxbridge Road in West London, with its Lebanese restaurants, West Indian markets and Indian sari shops, you will find Alice’s Wonderland.

As you walk through the front door of Alice Gates’ mid-terrace Victorian home, you are engulfed in a leafy green vestibule, where every surface is covered in the same jungle-print paper. It’s hard to know which way to turn, but Gates finds the secret latch and leads you through to the house proper. This is just the beginning of her looking-glass world, the one she shares with her husband, Harry, a barrister, and their three-month-old daughter, Cecily.

Passing a lampstand in the lavender-coloured sitting room, one can’t help but notice that the base is made of button-covered legs. Then there is Lilliann, the decorous mannequin “home help” waiting expectantly at the top of the stairs to the basement with fur-wrapped dustpan and brush in hand.

The basement area, where previous inhabitant Stewart Copeland used to rehearse and record early demos with the Police, has been extended to provide Gates with a studio, a long, book-lined TV room, a small study space for Harry and a utility room. This is also the domain of Sabrina, the other “home help” who has the feather duster and lacy apron.

“We dug out and waterproofed the basement to create reasonable head height, and added a side extension with a glass roof to give me plenty of natural light to work by,” says Gates as she walks through to her sunny studio with french windows leading out on to the small back garden.

At her desk Gates creates textile designs for the fashion label Libélula and the appliquéd and decoupage mannequins and hosiery limbs that appear unexpectedly around the house. Then there are days when she stands at an easel to paint canvases, and other times at a band saw to cut out the stand-alone wooden figures she makes.

The ground floor continues from the sitting room up a short flight of stairs to a dining area, and on through an arch of blue-painted shelves into the kitchen. The furniture in the sitting room is a mix. “I’m a great fan of the auctions at Lots Road, where we have picked up a painted dresser and a couple of stools with unusual cloven feet,” says Gates. “Some pieces, such as the red leather armchair, are from John Lewis, and others I have made Harry carry back from various holiday destinations.”

In the dining room there is a special, bespoke table. “Because the dining area is narrow we didn’t want a big solid wood table as it would make the space feel cramped, so, unbeknown, to Harry, I got the welder who was making the railings for the front garden to construct this table base to my design, and then he got a piece of glass cut to fit on top. When it was finished I gave the table to Harry as a wedding present.” And as you look closely at the structure of the table, which at first appears to be a rampant vine-like plant, you see that odd petals and leaves are in fact in the shape of a fork, a spoon or a knife.

Beside the table is a panelled front door with jewel-coloured panes of glass. “We wanted to cut the dining and kitchen area off from the bedrooms upstairs, to keep noise and cooking smells contained,” explains Gates, “and we found this door which fitted the gap. It didn’t matter that it was an external door – we just changed the panes of glass to make them more interesting.”

At the top of the stairs, baby Cecily is asleep in her nursery, and at the other end of the landing is her parents’ bedroom. This main bedroom is reached along a corridor of mirror-fronted wardrobes, that reflect the flamingo-print paper on the facing wall. Open the wardrobes and you are greeted by brilliant red interiors and, in Gates’ section, an array of glittering jewellery and brightly coloured clothes.

The bedroom itself is off-white with embroidered, duck-egg blue curtains at the French windows, which open out on to a small balcony. The bed is dressed with a cheerful red and white floral quilt, and on the bedside tables the black lampshades are also lined with red, creating an exotic glow when the lights are switched on. The spacious en suite bathroom has a double-ended tub, the surrounds of which are decorated with Gates’ paintings and cut-out figures, as well as little blue bottles of bath potions and oils.

It is a happy and unpredictable place to visit, with its blend of colours, patterns, saucy ladies, printed silks and punchy wallpapers. So much so that when it’s time to leave, and you step out of the bright green hallway into the grey, car-lined street, it makes you realise that decorating a home can really be quite an adventure.

www.alicegates.com; www.libelula-studio.com

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