Like so many people, Alexandra Evans and her husband, Tom, had always been cautious about color: “We had to think about resale value, so we painted everything white,” she says. Then the couple bought a 1914 fixer upper in Richmond Park, in southwest London, for themselves and their three children, ages 4, 9, and 13. Feeling as if they had found their “forever home,” they decided it was time to welcome in the bright and the bold.
Working with a trusted carpenter and crew, they embarked on the remodel themselves while also holding down their day jobs: He’s a lawyer and she’s the policy director for the British Board of Film Classification. And for the trickiest room in the house, the kitchen, they turned to Plain English offshoot British Standard, which offers readymade ?sensible cupboards at sensible prices for people with good taste but modest means.” The kitchen tally" £12,500 (approximately $16,000), plus carpentry and fitting costs of £5,000 ($6,367), many gallons of blue paint included. Photography courtesy of British Standard.

Above: The design was inspired by the couple’s love of midcentury furnishings and by Alexandra’s grandmother’s kitchen: “I’m always trying to capture the style and joyfulness of my granny’s house.” It occupies the footprint of the previous kitchen, which hadn’t been touched in decades. When Tom fixated on the Little Greene Paint Co...