40 Winks

To interior designer David Carter, home is a place of photo shoots, music videos and celebrity visits, and as of recently, home is also the smallest ever boutique hotel.

The setting for 40 Winks is East London’s Mile End Road. Passing a string of low-key Chinese restaurants and clusters of lackadaisical teenagers lounging in the evening sunshine, you don’t expect to see an immaculate row of townhouses, and you certainly don’t anticipate the type of interior that stands behind number 109.

As you enter the house you see it’s a large home by London standards, but not huge by any means. There’s a comfortable, calm atmosphere, and despite the constant comings and goings of fashion industry professionals, not a thing is out of place, although it avoids the museum-like feel that you might expect of such a precisely conceived collection of spaces. The darker rooms - for instance the warm basement kitchen, the coppery-tinged bathroom, and the deep greens and low lighting of the ground-floor reception room - contrast with the lighter spaces - such as the first floor music room (a kind of alternative living space to the deeper hues of downstairs) and the pale double guest bedroom. The odd grandiose flourish peeps from above a fireplace, or from out of a corner, but the décor is understated enough so as not to make first-time guests feel like scruffy intruders.

The guest accommodation consists of a single and a double bedroom, both gorgeously but delicately embellished. The deal is this: you get a set of keys and then come and go as you wish, or indeed stay in and relax. You won’t find yourself ringing a bell at reception, fiddling with remote-controlled curtains or dialling room service; this really is somebody’s home.

40 Winks also plays host to several events, such as a recent high-class couture soirée featuring fashion industry experts, as well as the much-lauded Bedtime Stories ( as we featured recently) a traditional story-telling evening which puts its listeners into bedtime apparel, and wraps up with the occasional surprise musical act. Thriving on a wide circle of talented, creative friends, Carter’s personal space is undeniably public.

40 Winks is not a normal hotel experience, certainly, but that’s precisely its biggest draw; it’s a natural choice for those on the look out for an entirely different, inescapably elegant place to stay in the city.

www.40winks.org