An Englishman’s home is his castle!

Are you perhaps carrying out an interior design project at the moment? Looking for a little inspiration? Well if your shoes are well heeled and your pockets deep, perhaps you can get some tips from the recent Channel 4 show, Millionaire’s Mansions.

Owning a prestigious property in London is paramount to every true oligarch, who are making London their home in their droves. The criteria for the home is quite stringent. It must be located in one of four districts, Mayfair, Belgravia, Kensington or Chelsea, the price tag must run into multi millions and the interior must be palatial.

The show documents London’s most respected interior designers who have recognised the thirst for lavish interiors amongst London’s elite. No expense is spared with wallpapers laced with twinkling LED lights and £185,000 chandeliers hanging from the ceilings. And this is no five minute makeover, in one particular case, the interior of a London townhouse has been under renovation for over seven years.

Ironically, many of these houses are empty for large amounts of the year. The owners probably have a portfolio of properties in the world’s most respected cities and spend time jaunting between Geneva and Monaco. So with expensive empty properties, our thoughts turn to security. 

With many of the new neighbours in London’s wealthy areas coming from Eastern areas of Europe, they are particularly aware of possible threats to their homes. And they’re taking no risks. Bullet proof windows, ram proof car garages and a well equipped panic room. Furthermore there is a team of ex SAS members patrolling the wealthiest streets, who promise to be on hand at the push of a button, should it be necessary.

Just outside the city a new development is currently under construction and they are taking security to the next level. The front gates operate only by car registration recognition and fingerprint security operates the front doors.

This type of technology is really protecting these luxury homes and their residents. In actual fact, the homes are rarely completely empty as staff are usually employed year round to take care of the house. And here is where the problems might start to arise. Reports suggested that even when homeowners are taking extreme precautions to ensure their homes are safe, human error is usually what causes a breach.

Sadly, many burglaries have been due to an inside job or a member of staff forgetting to use correct procedures. Therefore many of the elite living in London have swapped their traditional door keys for hotel styled cards. This allows them to remotely control who has access to which rooms and when.

And when things go wrong!

There was a story of a wealthy couple who had fingerprint access to their wine cellar. Whilst they were holidaying, the air conditioning broke and temperatures in the vault soared! With no fingerprints to save the day, the wine was completely ruined.