Notting Hill Residents Are Painting Their Colourful Houses Black

There are a lot of landmarks in this city. From the Tower of London (which was recently named the best place in the city to visit) to Camden Market, there are plenty of photo opportunities which don’t involve winding up the locals.

Notting Hill is famous for the 2004 Hugh Grant romcom of the same name, for hosting a huge annual carnival, and for being full of colour. Set just moments away from Portobello Market, the area is full of brightly painted homes, but it may not be that way for much longer.

Residents of the west London street Lancaster Road have started to cover the colourful facades of their houses with black in an effort to stop influencers from posing in front of them. Some have reported that there are tourists photographing the buildings from dusk till dawn, and begun to ask their neighbours to join them in doing away with the pastels.

One person living on the street explained to the Standard that ‘people just don’t understand that these are homes. It’s not a museum, it’s not an amusement park, it’s not a restaurant, these aren’t hotels,’ adding ‘we don’t have the facilities to cater for mass tourism. It’s just a residential street’.

These sentiments are echoed by a letter sent to the houses which are yet to paint over the rainbow toned properties, which stated; ‘It’s clear that the bright and contrasting house colours are a major draw for photographs for their social media accounts.

‘While we all value the charm of our street, the unintended consequence has been a surge in disruptive tourism.’

According to the Standard, locals have reported that there are frequently ‘hundreds’ of people crowding outside of the houses, making it difficult to work from home or even enter their own properties. A ‘quiet zone’ has been set up on the street which asks visitors to respect the people who live there, but it doesn’t seem to be doing much good – one resident described the situation as ‘horrendous’, and another recalled ‘I’ve even had things stolen from my car. It’s just become a nightmare’.

This doesn’t mean that the houses will stay black forever – just until the influencers get the hint and find somewhere else to pose. What can you do to help out these residents? The answer is pretty simple: simply stay away.

See Time Out’s guide to London’s 50 best attractions here and a list of our favourite alternative attractions here.