The best BAR none! Meet the very glamorous women who need venture no further than the next room for their martinis after installing bespoke cocktail counters in their own home
- Demand for home bars has risen by ten per cent each year for the last five years
- Alice Smellie meets the women who can venture to the next room for a martini
- Home bars can cost up to £100,000, or as little as £300, so why did they do it?
There’s nothing like a perfectly mixed cocktail. But for socialising, a dark, noisy bar isn’t for everyone, hence the trend of installing bespoke bars at home.
But these are not the fold-out wood cabinets of years past. Many have mirrors and backlighting, and can cost up to £100,000 — or as little as £300.
‘Home bars were seen as naff for a generation, but what could be nicer?’ says drinks expert Henry Jeffreys, author of The Home Bar.
Simon Bedford of thehomebarcompany.co.uk says demand has risen by 10 per cent each year for the last five years.
‘Home drinking is fun, and costs less than going out,’ he says.
ALICE SMELLIE spoke to the glamorous women who need venture no further than the next room for martinis . . .
Friends gasped as the lights changed colour
Paula Gibson, 52, and her husband, Gary, 53, both work in aviation. They have two grown-up daughters, Laura, 30 and Aimee, 28, and live in Hampshire.
When my daughters gave me a book about cocktail-making for Christmas a couple of years ago, they had no idea what they had started.
That New Year’s Eve we all made colourful cocktails and sipped our way through the evening.
Paula Gibson, pictured in her home in Hampshire, kept her bar a secret until it was finished, then invited friends around for drinks in June. As they entered, there were gasps of surprise and admiration
We have lived in our house for 11 years, and were lucky enough to have an indoor swimming pool, but recently we realised it was looking a bit tired around the edges.
We’ve always entertained a lot and love having the girls and their husbands over, so earlier this year we thought: ‘Why not get rid of the pool and turn it into a party space, including a shiny new cocktail bar?’
Because the room is so large, we divided it into three sections: the bar, with built-in karaoke and a space for dancing, a cinema with cosy sofas for us to watch films as a family, and a man-cave corner with a big screen and special chairs with steering wheels for playing F1 racing video games. But the bar is the focal point.
We kept it all a secret until it was finished, then invited friends around for drinks in June. As they entered, there were gasps of surprise and admiration. They loved the lights, which we can change the colour of according to our mood or the season — at Halloween we lit the bar up orange.
One guest turned to me and said: ‘I know that this is a very stupid question, but does the floor slide open to reveal the pool?’ I met my husband’s eye. What a good idea for the future!
Our sleek bar is made from a hard-wearing laminate and medium-density fibreboard. It has glasses of all shapes and sizes and, of course, a fridge full of mixers and wine. It is our pride and joy, and although it was a bespoke design, it only cost about £1,000.
I have to admit, I still prefer wine and champagne to cocktails, but we have shelves of spirits and Aimee and Laura are amazing at creating them. Gary is pretty proficient, too. He can be a bartending Tom Cruise (from the film Cocktail) if I ask him nicely.
We had to have a coffee machine for espresso martinis
Faye Watts, 41, lives in London with her husband, Steve, 47, and they run an accountancy business together.
Nothing says welcome like a beautifully mixed cocktail, full of fresh fruit and ice and lovingly shaken into a glass.
We renovated our house three years ago, and a priority for the kitchen was a beautiful bar area, with a fitted walnut interior and chairs where we could relax at the end of the week.
Faye Watts from London says her home made bar makes any evening an occasion. She said: ‘We often invite people for drinks and nibbles’
I think home cocktail bars once had a bit of a ‘corporate wife’ association, but thankfully times have changed — that’s not my image.
I bought all the trimmings for our bar, including a cocktail shaker, stirrers and glasses. We even had a coffee machine installed to make espresso martinis.
The bar was quite expensive — around £8,000 in total — but it’s an investment, like buying costly kitchen units. It’s now an integral part of our home. Besides, when it comes to cost per use, we must be down to pennies by now.
I’m not a fan of midweek drinking but at weekends, when we get home from doing the Saturday shopping, it’s quite firmly gin o’clock.
My husband and I love entertaining and if you give someone a great gin cocktail with ginger and fresh lime, or rosemary and grapefruit, it’s always a talking point. We all end up tasting each other’s.
You’d think having our own bar would mean we consume more alcohol, but actually we end up drinking less. A delicious and painstakingly made drink is savoured, rather than thrown down like wine or beer.
It also makes any evening an occasion; we often invite people for drinks and nibbles. Having a cocktail makes it a party, whereas just having a few bottles of wine is like saying ‘Come and get drunk’.
We’ve even ended up building a similar bar at our office. We wanted to offer clients a pleasant drink — what’s better than a gin and tonic after a meeting? Whether it’s gatherings at home or work, a cocktail shows that you value someone.
I couldn’t live in a house without one
Electra Callan, 30, is a lawyer. She lives in London with her husband Dean, 36, who is a drinks and branding consultant.
I still live in the area where I grew up, and lots of my oldest friends are close by. In the old days I’d serve them tea and Hobnobs, but these days we’re a little more sophisticated and it’s all about the cocktails from our very own bar.
My husband and I love cocktails — Dean jokes that he knew he wanted to marry me when I told him I could never live in a house without a bar.
Electra Callan built a dedicated bar from polished reclaimed wood. It has been beautifully designed and constructed by her husband Dean, and cost around £2,000
In our last house we had a makeshift one made from Ikea furniture, with a large piece of wood placed on top. But when we moved we upscaled and built a dedicated bar from polished reclaimed wood.
It has been beautifully designed and constructed by Dean, and cost around £2,000. We use it all the time.
Dean even hosts a lot of work meetings and consultations around it. We love having people round to try the latest cocktail, and it’s a running joke that people get upset if they aren’t invited over.
We also have a huge projector screen which comes down and covers the door, so recently we had friends over to watch the Anthony Joshua boxing match.
It’s amazing to be able to our host our friends like this. It’s different to a real bar as it’s private and, most importantly, everyone is there only to enjoy each other’s company.
Whenever we have a celebration we ‘sabrage’ a champagne bottle — open it with a sabre — and keep the cork, so the ceiling is covered in corks. Each holds a special memory.
Our bar matches the ones in Soho House
Lexie Stoddart, 46, an interior designer, lives in Somerset with her husband Ed, 48, the director of furniture design company Square Roots.
They have three children, Lila, 14, Freddie, 12 and Tarka, 11.
Ten years ago we were living in Vietnam for Ed’s work, and he was commissioned to make cocktail bars by the designer Rupert Bevan.
Murray Sanders said having a bar made her house in Vietnam a social hub. Nice alcohol was tricky to get hold of, so everyone would bring us bottles from Duty Free and they would make cocktails to sip on balmy evenings
Some were destined for the Soho Beach House members’ club in Miami — but we liked them so much we ended up keeping one.
It’s become a treasured possession and we had to bring it with us when we returned to the UK. Made from hand-cut antique mirrored glass, it is so stylish. If you bought one now you’d pay around £10,000.
It made our house in Vietnam a social hub. Nice alcohol was tricky to get hold of, so everyone would bring us bottles from Duty Free and we would make cocktails to sip on balmy evenings under the palm trees in our garden. It really was the expat lifestyle.
The bar is now in our sitting room, with a log fire and cosy furniture. We use it every week for entertaining friends or family. Even the grannies indulge.
But this year, we’ve also added Seedlip, a non-alcoholic ‘gin’, to our collection, and more friends ask for it as they do Sober October, Dry January, or just ditch alcohol.
The bar is a good ice-breaker. People will clock the bottles and ask if they can mix a cocktail, often standing by the bar for the rest of the evening. The best thing is the bar has doors to hide mess.
When the night is over, you close it down, leaving the room tidy. You only realise it’s full of sticky glasses the next week!
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