The rooms people buy one piece at a time
I qualified as an interior designer in April 1999, after a three-year diploma at Technikon Witwatersrand.
Since then I’ve designed corporate offices, commercial and retail interiors, hospitality, medical rooms and homes, mostly across South Africa, with projects in Australia and the UK. Single rooms through to complete buildings, with the construction drawings, shopfitting drawings and 3D visuals that go with them.
Somewhere in that time I noticed something that kept repeating.
A business would spend months getting its offices right. Where people sit, what they can see, how far they walk to the things they use, what happens when two activities need the same corner. Nobody thought that was excessive. It was just what you did.
Then those same people would go home and buy a sofa because it was on sale
What I do now
Homes get assembled one purchase at a time, months or years apart, each decision made without the others in view. Nobody plans it. It’s just how a house fills up.
The result is a room full of things somebody genuinely liked, that don’t agree with each other. Good pieces, bought carefully, that still add up to less than they should.
The part people find hardest isn’t choosing. It’s knowing what belongs. You can have excellent taste and still not be able to say what connects the rooms you keep saving, which means every new purchase is a fresh gamble.
That’s the part I do. I look at what you already own, what you keep returning to and what you’re trying to achieve, then work out the thread running through it. Once you can see the thread, the sofa, the colour and the light stop being separate decisions.
It’s the same thing a business gets when it plans an office properly. Where things go, in what order, and why.
The credentials, briefly
I’m a Professional Senior Interior Designer listed with the IID, the African Institute of the Interior Design Professionals.
Quoted as an interiors expert by the Daily Mail, the Sun, Saga, Woman & Home, Ideal Home, Country Living, Good Homes and Stylist.
I’ve written for Preneur World, and my work has appeared in the Journal of Biophilic Design.
Where to start
If you’re circling one room and can’t settle it, that’s Insight & Inspiration.
If you’re ready to spend properly on a single room and want it resolved before you buy, that’s Refined Design.
If it’s a whole home, a renovation, or anything commercial, that’s Signature Spaces.