Olympic hopeful Dina Asher-Smith opens the door to her winning home
Dina Asher-Smith loves silence. The pin-drop moment before the starting pistol fires, and a crowd of 100,000 holds its breath. It’s why the fastest British female sprinter of all time couldn’t live in a city, choosing instead to make her home in a quiet, leafy Kent suburb surrounded by nature and close to her family and friends.
‘This house is a labour of love, something I have been working towards for four years,’ she says of her new base. ‘I can be myself here.’
As an athlete who spends much of her time training in Austin, Texas, having a home that supports her physically and mentally is crucial, especially on the eve of the Paris Olympics, where she will once again represent Great Britain. ‘I want to come home and totally forget that there might be these incredible things that could happen,’ she says. ‘There’s going to be no evidence that I even run track or whether I’m good at it or not!’
That means you won’t find a trophy cabinet attesting to Dina’s successes, which include a 200m gold from the 2019 World Championships, six European Championships titles and two Olympic medals.
‘I’m not one of those athletes that has a shrine to themselves,’ she says. ‘I normally keep my medals in a safe, but my parents are known for taking them and showing them off to all their friends. It sometimes takes me a while to realise that my mum has run off with my Olympic medal! I’m very proud of them, but they’re not something I have on show.’
Once she’d finished the renovations and extending her fixer-upper – working on the project with architect and interior designer Natalie Blackshaw at Design United – Dina needed help choosing colours to bring the spaces to life. ‘I wanted it to feel zen, like I was in a spa, and natural,’ she explains, adding, ‘this area is very green, which is my favourite colour – especially sage. I like a calm palette but I wanted there to be injections of colour and personality, whether through texture and shape or tone and depth.’
She turned to Farrow & Ball’s legendary colour curator Joa Studholme, who quickly realised Dina’s style was a perfect fit for the ‘Carte Blanche’ range, which the paint and wallpaper brand created with US fashion designer Christopher John Rogers. ‘One of my best track-and-field friends is a phenomenal high jumper, and her mum works for Farrow & Ball so I’ve known about them for years,’ Dina says. Having modelled for Valentino, Off-White and Louis Vuitton, Dina is, herself, a self-proclaimed ‘fashion girl’ and a fan of Christopher John Rogers’ vibrant designs. ‘When the opportunity came to work with both, I felt like a kid in a candy shop,’ she admits.
A tranquil home creates the balanced state of mind that’s essential to performance at a high level: ‘When you’re doing something so visible, so present and extroverted,’ she shares, ‘you have to have that internal confidence to give all of your soul to those 10 seconds that can change your life.’ That called for the soft, warm neutrals ‘Au Lait’ and ‘Roasted Macadamia’ for the majority of the walls, which maintain a sense of serenity throughout and create a seamless flow.
Of their creative dynamic, Dina admits: ‘I have fairly strong opinions, let’s start there. Green had to be a feature, and that was not negotiable!’ Joa saw her role as helping Dina refine her choices while adding a few decorative flourishes to gently nudge her out of her comfort zone. For example, Dina was happy with using ‘Macadamia’ throughout the halls, but then Joa suggested they do it in a half-gloss, half-matte finish to reflect light around the space.
‘It sounded like a good idea, but you know when you can’t quite visualise it?’ recalls Dina. ‘But it really works, especially when you come up the stairs. It looks beautiful.’
She finds it hard to choose her favourite space because they’re all so different, but calls out the living room with its soft wash of green shot through with terracotta, as well as the pantry’s rich, complex ‘Cardamom’; ‘I just think it’s so interesting. I’m into dark colours in small spaces, and I really enjoy that chocolatey-green in a food environment,’ she says, laughing.
The surprise pop of ‘Blue Maize’ inside the wardrobes is another detail that delights her: ‘Everything’s very calm, and then you open your wardrobe and it’s like bam! That is definitely a bit of me.’
Whether it’s painting the insides of the door frames or playing with gloss on a ceiling, Dina has relished the opportunity to use colour creatively to achieve the aim of having a home that helps her to be her best, both on and off the track. ‘When you’ve got that environment and that internal peace it gives you so much more energy to convert into fantastic performances, speed and power in front of a stadium of 80,000 people, millions of people on TV, the entire world!’ farrow-ball.com
