What We Believe About Home: Why We Design For A Tuesday Morning, Not Saturday Night.
Nearly every client, at some point in our first meeting, describes a version of their home that's really designed for other people. The formal living room kept for visitors. The sofa nobody's allowed to put their feet on. The good towels that only come out when someone's staying over.
It's completely understandable. We think it gets the brief backwards.
The Oxshott dining room, a space that brings family together every day and friends together at the weekend
A home is lived in by the people inside it almost every day of the year. Guests might enjoy it for a handful of evenings. Yet surprisingly often, the biggest design decisions get made for the handful rather than the hundreds: a pale sofa that has to survive untouched, a dining table reserved for entertaining instead of homework and breakfast, a kitchen styled to impress rather than organised to make cooking easier.
We're not against Saturday night. We love homes that bring people together. But the people who live there every day should always come first. Get Tuesday morning right, and Saturday night usually looks after itself.
One of our favourite examples is an entertaining space we designed in Oxshott. The brief genuinely centred on bringing family and friends together, so we embraced it fully, rich natural materials, layered lighting, textures and acoustics people would want to linger in long after dinner. But we made sure it still felt connected to the rest of the home. We kept the original bespoke radiator covers and used them as inspiration for the new joinery, so the room belonged to the house rather than standing apart as a special-occasion space.
The Oxshott dining room, featuring a bespoke bar at the heart of family gatherings and evenings with friends
Even when entertaining is the priority, a room should never feel like it's waiting for permission to be used. A kitchen should work as well for a rushed Tuesday breakfast as it does for a dinner party. A sofa should be built for Sunday afternoon films, not just admired from across the room.
This way of thinking changes a lot of ordinary decisions. We'll recommend fabrics that cope with children and dogs before we worry how they look in candlelight. We'll question whether a room needs to be formal if it means it rarely gets used. The question we keep coming back to is simple: who is this actually for? If the honest answer is guests, we'll gently push back, and ask our clients to picture the room on an ordinary Tuesday morning instead. Children eating breakfast. Someone making coffee before work. Real life.
The Oxshott dining room, where light, texture and natural materials come together to create a warm and welcoming space
That's often the moment a project changes direction, when clients stop describing the home they think they should want, and start describing the one they actually want to live in.
The best homes don't ask a family to wait for a special occasion before they're fully lived in. They're lived in every day. They simply happen to welcome guests beautifully when Saturday night comes around.
Love how you live.
