Home Design Ideas | Decorating | Gardening

Even on the dullest day, there isn’t a problem seeing your way around Jake Dyson’s North London home, it is so well lit. The house, which was built in 1875, has long windows at the front, French windows across the back wall of the rear extension and a glass skylight over the staircase in the hall, but it is with the flick of a switch that the place comes to life.

“When I moved here a year ago, my priorities were to paint the walls and put in the lights,” says Dyson. “I’d wanted an Arco floor light and a Max Lamp for ages, but they wouldn’t fit in my previous home.” The lights he refers to are the statuesque, marble-based piece by Castiglioni, the metal arm of which sweeps over the end of the desk in the study, and the oversized, adjustable light in the corner of the sitting room by an Eames chair and footstool.

There is also the black, adjustable bracket light by Rizzatto for Flos over the end of a mammoth, grey Flexiform sofa and, opposite, a vintage photographic light and stand. Then there are various pairs of wall-mounted uplighters and an adjustable, blue, Meccano-like light in the dining area, along with a row of compact, moving Motorlights at the base of the graceful staircase that runs through the core of the house like a spine.

“I’ve always been interested in lighting,” says Dyson. “I used to live in a Georgian terraced house where I put optic fibres in the ceiling and used fluorescent strip lights to jazz up the alcoves.”

The Motorlight variable angle lights that accentuate the curve of the staircase are Dyson’s own invention. The upper sections of the lights move silently but rhythmically on a small rotating disc. This movement alters the range of the beam from narrow and direct to wide and diffuse. The lights can be synchronised so that they move in a regular pattern, fixed so that the beam stays at the desired intensity, or set to modulate randomly.

Dyson’s interest in mechanics started at the age of 14 when an employee at his father’s factory (his father is the vacuum cleaner designer James Dyson) showed him how to use a mill and lathe. After a degree in industrial design, Dyson set up a basic workshop and started experimenting. His first project was the creation of a double-blade room fan, soon to be launched in Australia. “It is based on helicopter propellers,” he says, and it has taken six years to get the project from the drawing board to the shop shelf.

Then came a new workshop in North London and the advent of the Motorlight, another intricately engineered, long-term project that is fast becoming a design statement used by architects and interior designers in offices and homes. The light has a strangely calming effect. It seems to sigh as it gently rises and lowers and the beam opens and closes, but Dyson describes it as dynamic. “It’s like music: you can choose the type and level of light you have in the same way you would select music to suit your mood,” he says. “People have told me that they watch the changing light beams instead of turning on the television.”

Away from his workshop, Dyson relaxes not only in the open and uncluttered rooms of his home, but also in its garden. “The things I loved about this house were its architectural proportions and the garden, which spans the rear of the house, is edged by mature trees and has a bit of grass, so when I’m out there it is almost like being in the country.”

Inside, the interconnecting study, sitting room, dining and kitchen areas are minimally furnished and all have vistas of the green space, framed by floor-length, unlined, natural linen curtains. Upstairs, the main bathroom and bedroom both look out over the tree tops and well-planted borders.

The garden is also reflected in the custom-made rug that lies in front of the fireplace in the sitting room. “The colours, especially the stripes around the side, were chosen to reflect the autumn sky and leaves,” says Dyson of the thick pile carpet that comes from his mother Deirdre’s shop on London’s Kings Road.

“I’d done up two houses from scratch before moving in here and, apart from painting the walls in a very soft shade of grey, I am taking my time before making any changes,” he says.

Coming from the man who devoted four years to refining his motorised lights and six years to fine-tune a fan, it proves he is more than patient when it comes to making something perfect.