Residential Interior Design in London
Tell Us About Your Home. We’ll Show You What It Could Be
A Notting Hill family came to T&V Architects with a house full of beautiful period details and a floor plan that had never quite worked. High ceilings, generous proportions, three reception rooms that felt disconnected from one another. What they needed was not a decorator. They needed residential interior design in London rooted in architectural discipline.
That distinction matters. Most interior designers work with what a room already is. T&V Architects works with what a home could become. We reconsider proportions, reposition thresholds, rethink the relationship between spaces. The result is residential interior design that looks effortless precisely because the hard thinking happened before a single paint colour was chosen. London homes carry particular complexity. Georgian terraces in Marylebone, Victorian conversions in Clapham, modern lateral apartments in Vauxhall, listed townhouses in Belgravia — each building type demands a different approach. Our practice has worked across all of them. That breadth of architectural experience is what we bring to every residential interior design commission in London.
Atmospheric Palettes: Colour That Responds to London Light
Walk through Primrose Hill on a February morning and you will understand why colour in London cannot be chosen from a paint chart alone. The light here is particular — soft, shifting, often indirect. A palette that reads as warm and welcoming in a south-facing Fulham kitchen can feel flat and grey in a north-facing Islington drawing room.
T&V Architects approaches colour as an architectural material. We study how light enters each room at different times of day and across different seasons before committing to a palette. Earthy neutrals — warm taupes, chalky whites, deep charcoals — form the foundation of much of our residential interior design work in London. Then we introduce considered accents: a dusty sage in a Chelsea bedroom, a deep ochre in a Kensington library, a pale terracotta that brings unexpected warmth to a basement kitchen extension.
These are not decorative choices made at the end of a project. They are architectural decisions that shape how a home feels from the moment you step inside.
Layered Illumination: Lighting Designed for How You Live
A single lighting scheme cannot serve a London home well. The same sitting room needs to function as a bright space for reading on a December afternoon, a warm, social environment for an evening gathering, and a calm retreat for winding down at night. One overhead pendant achieves none of these things with any distinction.
Our residential interior design approach treats lighting as architecture. We design layered illumination — ambient circuits, task lighting, accent lighting, and discreet architectural detailing such as recessed niches and lit shelving — all separately controlled and dimmable. The lighting plan is produced in parallel with the spatial design, not added at the end. Fixtures are specified for how they contribute to the room’s architectural language, not simply chosen from a catalogue.
A Mayfair client recently told us their sitting room felt completely different after our lighting redesign — the same furniture, the same finishes, but a space that finally felt as generous and considered as the building it occupied.
Bespoke Joinery: Furniture That Belongs to the Building
Fitted furniture ordered from a catalogue occupies a room. Bespoke joinery designed by an architect belongs to it. The difference is visible the moment you walk in — and invisible in the best way, because the joinery feels as though it could not be anywhere else.
T&V Architects designs bespoke timber joinery as a natural extension of residential interior design. Bookcases aligned to cornice heights. Window seats that resolve awkward alcoves. Media walls that conceal technology without sacrificing architectural integrity. Wardrobe systems in primary bedrooms that work with the room’s proportions rather than against them.
We select timber for its tactile quality and its longevity. European oak, American walnut, painted ash — the choice depends on the building, the room, and the client. What never varies is the standard of the detailing. These are pieces designed to last for decades and to improve with age.
Heritage Sensitivity: Modern Interiors in Period London Homes
London’s residential architecture spans four centuries. Working within it requires a particular kind of sensitivity — one that understands when to defer to a building’s historical narrative and when to introduce a clearly contemporary voice. The worst period home interiors try to do both at once and achieve neither.
T&V Architects has extensive experience in residential interior design for London’s listed and conservation-area properties. We understand the statutory context — what requires Listed Building Consent, what falls within permitted development, where local authority conservation officers will require a particular approach. We manage that complexity so our clients do not have to.
More importantly, we understand the design challenge. A Georgian townhouse in Pimlico should feel like a Georgian townhouse. Not a museum, and not a pastiche — but a home whose contemporary interior acknowledges the building’s heritage and sits within it with confidence and respect.
Culinary Architecture: Kitchen Design as the Heart of the Home
In most London homes today, the kitchen is not a utility room. It is the room where family life happens — morning routines, weekend cooking, informal entertaining, homework at the island. Its design deserves the same architectural rigour as any other space in the house.
T&V Architects approaches kitchen design as a branch of residential interior design, not a separate discipline. The kitchen is designed in relation to the rooms it connects to, the light it receives, and the way the household actually lives. Material selection — quartzite worktops, bespoke timber cabinetry, integrated high-performance appliances — happens as part of a coherent architectural vision, not as a series of individual purchases.
For a Hampstead family, we redesigned the entire ground floor around a new kitchen that connected to the garden for the first time. The project required structural work, planning consent, and careful material curation. The result was a home that finally worked as a whole.
Architectural Bathrooms: Natural Stone and Considered Detail
A bathroom is a small room that rewards precision. The wrong tile size makes a space feel cramped. Poor lighting turns a generous en suite into something functional but cheerless. A vanity unit at the wrong height becomes a daily irritation. These are not details — they are the difference between a bathroom that feels like a luxury and one that merely functions.
T&V Architects designs bathrooms with the same material rigour we apply to kitchens. Natural stone — honed marble, travertine, quartzite — is selected in person at the yard, with attention to veining, tone, and how the stone will work with the room’s dimensions. Bespoke vanity units are designed as architectural furniture. Lighting is layered: bright and even for practical use, warm and atmospheric for everything else. Wet rooms, freestanding baths, concealed cisterns, underfloor heating — these are standard elements of our residential bathroom design in London. What is not standard is the level of care we bring to how they are put together.
Purposeful Curation: Furniture Selection and Space Planning
London rooms are rarely as large as their owners would like. The challenge of residential interior design in this city is not simply what to put in a room, but how to make a room feel generous despite its actual dimensions. That requires careful space planning before a single piece of furniture is chosen.
T&V Architects produces detailed space plans for every residential interior design project. We work through circulation routes, furniture scales, sight lines, and the relationship between fixed elements and moveable pieces. Only once the plan is resolved do we move to furniture selection — and we select with the same curatorial eye we bring to material specification. We work with a range of makers, from established British furniture manufacturers to independent craftspeople whose work we have discovered and followed over the years. The goal is always furniture that feels right for the room, the building, and the client — not furniture that announces itself.
Seamless Living: Open-Plan Kitchen, Dining and Reception Spaces
The open-plan ground floor has become the defining residential interior design move of the last two decades in London. Done well, it transforms how a home feels — light flows deeper into the plan, family life happens in a shared space, inside and garden connect. Done poorly, it produces a large room with an identity crisis.
T&V Architects designs open-plan spaces by zoning them with architectural precision. Level changes, changes in floor material, variations in ceiling height, the careful positioning of islands and furniture — these are the tools we use to give cooking, dining, and living areas their own character within a continuous space. The result feels open and connected, but not undifferentiated.
Several of our most significant residential interior design projects in London have involved the complete reconfiguration of Victorian and Edwardian ground floors to create this kind of space. It requires structural engineering, party wall agreements, and planning expertise — all of which T&V Architects manages in-house.
Material Integrity: Surfaces Specified as Architecture
Every surface in a room makes a statement. Floor tiles that don’t quite work with the skirting board. A wall finish that competes with the joinery. Hardware that feels slightly wrong for the door. These are the things that distinguish a home that has been carefully considered from one that has simply been decorated.
T&V Architects specifies materials holistically. Floors, walls, ceilings, joinery, hardware, soft furnishings — every finish is considered in relation to every other. We produce detailed material boards for each room, presenting the complete palette before anything is ordered. Clients see how their choices work together before they are committed.
We have long-standing relationships with stone yards, tile manufacturers, textile suppliers, and hardware makers across London and Europe. These relationships give us access to materials that are not available through standard retail channels, and the knowledge to specify them correctly.
Spatial Transformation: Interior Architecture That Reshapes How a Home Feels
Some homes need more than interior design. They need interior architecture — the kind of intervention that changes the fundamental structure of how a space works. A staircase repositioned to open up a ground floor. An internal wall removed to connect two rooms that should always have been one. A rooflight introduced above a dark central hallway. A basement excavated to create a new level of living space.
T&V Architects is uniquely positioned to offer this kind of service precisely because we are architects, not interior designers who have expanded into space planning. We carry full professional indemnity, we are registered with the ARB, and we are members of the RIBA. When a residential interior design project requires structural change, we handle it within the same commission — no handoffs, no coordination failures, no gap between the architectural vision and its execution.
A Belgravia client came to us wanting a more beautiful home. What they discovered was that the home they wanted required a new configuration, not just new finishes. Three years later, the project has been featured in the architectural press and — more importantly — the family cannot imagine having lived any other way.
Residential Interior Design in London: The T&V Architects Approach
London homes are among the most architecturally varied and historically complex residential buildings in the world. Designing interiors for them — interiors that will last, that will grow with their occupants, that will honour the buildings they inhabit — requires more than taste. It requires architectural rigour, material knowledge, technical expertise, and a genuine understanding of how Londoners live.
That is what T&V Architects provides. Whether the project is a single bathroom in a Kensington flat or the complete interior architecture of a Mayfair townhouse, we bring the same discipline, the same care, and the same commitment to spaces that feel entirely right.
T&V Architects is based at 18 St George’s Drive, London SW1V 4BL. To discuss a residential interior design project in London, contact us on +44 (0)20 7931 9620 or book a consultation through our website.