If you've ever visited Notting Hill, you may wonder why the houses are so colourful!

The short answer is they were’t always meant to be chic.

Notting Hill’s famous pastel houses grew out of a pretty rough patch in the area’s history. In the mid-20th century, many of those grand Victorian terraces had been chopped up into cheap bedsits and rented out to poorer and immigrant communities. Landlords weren’t exactly rushing to maintain them, so the area gained a reputation for being rundown.

In the late 1950s and 60s, artists, writers, and counter-culture types began moving in because the rents were low. They started painting their houses in bold colours partly as a form of self-expression and partly as a way of reclaiming and brightening a neglected neighbourhood. It was a very Notting Hill thing to do: anti-establishment, individualistic, and a bit bohemian.

There was also a practical side. When several families were sharing one building, bright colours made it easier to identify individual houses or entrances. Over time, as the area gentrified from the 1970s onwards, those colours stuck and became part of the local identity rather than a protest gesture.

By the time films like Notting Hill came along in the 1990s, the look had been fully romanticised. What began as a DIY rebellion against urban decline turned into one of London’s most photographed streets, and today the colours are often carefully curated and repainted to maintain that image.