In her famous essay A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf extolled the importance of exactly that: a space in which to think, create and simply be for women, in particular. Almost a century later, the idea still resonates, although the rooms that mean the most to us aren’t always those in which we find solitude. Sometimes, they’re the ones that inspire us, make us feel most like ourselves and, ultimately, stay with us long after we leave them. With that in mind, asked interior designers and experts to share the one room that holds particular significance for them – and the lessons they continue to carry from it.
“I continually return to Eltham Palace’s main entrance hall – I find the house endlessly fascinating. The Courtauld family created this unique Art Deco home within the ruins of a medieval palace, and its mixture of periods, styles and brilliant details has inspired me since I first visited many years ago.
It’s the first room you enter and a brilliant, refreshing surprise – the gardens and architecture don’t quite prepare you for something so beautifully designed. The circular rug and groundbreaking glazed ceiling dome hold you comfortably at the centre of the room, creating warmth and intimacy within a space of truly grand proportions. It is perhaps the most complete expression of Art Deco in the house, yet there are still cheeky nods to the medieval great hall next door, particularly in the marquetry walls around the staircases.
The drama of the design – every element has been conceived specifically to complement the room as a whole – as well as the wonderful interplay of light and dark throughout the space, make it a room that continues to inspire me.”
“It may seem a little ironic that such a communal, family-oriented space would be my ‘room of one’s own’, but the sitting room in my home – an 18th-century cottage in north London, which I’ve nicknamed ‘Cottage Noir’ – is where my personality, design passions and the way I love to live are most fully expressed. It is also, in the Virginia Woolf tradition, the room that gave me the confidence and clarity to reorient my life towards interiors, eventually leading me to write a book about homes, House Proud: Black Interiors and Architecture Across Continents and Centuries.
I describe it as ‘Afro aristo meets Caribbean nan chic’ because, when I began decorating, I found myself instinctively returning to childhood memories of the textures, symbols, colours and heritage pieces in my two grandmothers’ homes: my Nigerian grandmother’s compound house in Lagos and my Jamaican nana’s Windrush-era home in Bristol. I wanted to find contemporary interpretations that evoked something of that same spirit.
I sourced delicate seagrass raffia wallpaper from Arte, which brings a wonderful tactile quality; sofas upholstered in a geometric four-stripe design, custom-made to sit seamlessly within the idiosyncrasies of old cottage walls; and an ever-evolving collection of cushions, many featuring African designs and images of Black women. I’ve also decorated with objects that carry a sense of lineage, including a carved wooden Nigerian trunk I found at auction, depicting a Benin king’s royal procession. Above the sofa hangs a hand-appliquéd Asafo flag from Ghana depicting the proverb of the Welcoming Tree: a fruit-laden tree providing food and shelter to the animals around it. In many ways, that is the mission of this sitting room too: to be a place of welcome, comfort and abundance.”
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“I’ve chosen the primary bedroom from a 1904 Edwardian home in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights that we recently restored for a young family of five. The house had been stripped of almost all of its original character, so much of the project was about bringing a sense of history back into rooms that had lost it entirely. I keep returning to this bedroom because it feels warm, curved and private, while being rooted in the historical details that had originally been removed.
There is so much I love about it. The oval shape lends the room a unique sense of intimacy, while dappled light filters through the perforated sheer drapery and a glossy, layered ceiling catches it and bounces it back into the space. I also love the piano-hinged drawers tucked into the back of the custom bed frame, and the way the painting feels as though it was made for this room. A 1930s pendant brings textural contrast to the glossy ceiling above, while the unexpected grey-lavender upholstery on the bed somehow feels perfectly at home.
It’s a room that changed the way I think about ceilings entirely. It shows that architecture and quiet architectural lighting can do as much to shape the way a space feels as anything at eye level. I’ve also carried forward the idea of allowing one room to become fully saturated in colour and material, while the rest of the house remains in conversation with it rather than simply repeating it. That restraint elsewhere is what allows a room like this to sing.”
“This is the bedroom in my Hudson Valley home – it’s my oasis and escape from the world. Every morning, I wake to views of the lawn and pond, and find so much joy in watching the seasons change.
The room is enveloped in Soane’s Scrolling Acanthus wallpaper, with curtains in Madeleine Castaing’s Louisiane fabric and a Cogolin carpet. I wanted to layer pattern upon pattern, but keep everything within a similar colour palette, so that despite the room’s generous proportions and high ceilings, it still feels peaceful and cosy. My dramatic bed creates a strong focal point and brings a little dynamic energy to the space. It’s also a room I love to work in whenever I can.
I designed the room entirely for myself, but it also demonstrates that filling a space with pattern doesn’t have to feel overwhelming. Texture, colour and layers can come together in a way that feels warm, enveloping and harmonious, rather than cacophonous.”
“I have so many happy memories from our old house and, despite its small size, I’m still particularly attached to the bedroom. Rather than fight its proportions, I decided to make it all about the bed, adding a corona canopy and upholstering the bed itself in a deckchair fabric left over from the backdrop at our wedding reception. I loved bringing something from such a special day into our everyday life.
We painted the fitted wardrobes in high-gloss citrine green, which bounced the light around beautifully. Two large sash windows had simple, relaxed Roman blinds in a yellow linen, which felt cheerful and slightly floppy. But the corona was probably my favourite part. I used several different fabrics, including a little block print to line the inside, then added a crazy silk bouillon fringe around the top edges. It made the whole room feel incredibly cosy and enveloping.
I’m still drawn to so many of the ideas in that room: using colour instinctively, mixing antique textiles with new fabrics and making practical things feel decorative and special. I also love the idea of embracing a room’s limitations. The bedroom was small, but we didn’t try to make it feel bigger; instead, we really went for it. That’s something I still think about in my work now.”
“I have always loved colour and pattern, but the kitchen in our family home in west London has really shown me that both can be calming as well as energising. I chose this beautiful leafy wallpaper, which picks up the greens of the patio floor, door and fence, softening the boundaries between inside and out – the room feels almost like an extension of our small garden. Wrapping both the walls and ceiling in this bold, verdant pattern creates the feeling of being beneath a canopy of trees, enveloped by greenery. When we fling the doors open, life can spill seamlessly from the house into the garden.
Growing up in Mexico, where surrealism has such an important cultural legacy, I’ve always had an affinity for pieces that bring together elements that wouldn’t necessarily coexist in the real world – such as the cupboard handles with stars behind them, crafted from unlacquered solid brass. I also love how the changing light brings the botanical wallpaper to life in different ways throughout the day.
Covering the ceiling in wallpaper taught me just how much fun you can have with an often-overlooked surface. We recently commissioned a hand-painted mural for a hotel project in Vienna that extends across the ceiling too – an idea inspired, in part, by the success of this room.”
“There is something special to me about the fact that one room can accommodate so many different aspects of life. In our kitchen-cum-dining room, we cook, eat, work, host clients, entertain and just sit together. It’s a space that constantly shifts between work, everyday life and entertaining. I have a strong emotional connection to it because so much of what’s in it has been collected, commissioned or made over time. There are pieces that remind us of people, places and experiences – from an 18th-century chair that belonged to my husband’s grandmother to a Michael Eden bronze urn – alongside things we simply fell in love with. The room has become a kind of record of our lives together – and continues to evolve as we do.
Once home to Francis Bate, one of the founders of the New English Art Club, the room has a wonderful sense of calm. There is always another layer of detail to discover, from the embroidered cushions commissioned from Vanderhurd to the non-tessellating tile pattern on the chimney breast, which gives the room a more considered architectural focus. The vivid teal of the tiles is also a contemporary reference to Leighton House, somewhere that has long inspired me. And then there is the huge fig tree, which really makes the room. We negotiated hard to persuade the previous owners to leave it behind – it had even helped them win at the Chelsea Flower Show.
I’m not inspired by my own design, exactly, but I do sometimes use this room as a case study for clients who need a physical example of what we are trying to create. It’s useful to be able to show that an interior can feel calm and pared-back while still having personality, depth and a strong sense of the people who inhabit it.”
“This sitting room in a private residence in Marylebone was the first room I ever designed under my own name, which felt truly monumental at the time. Starting a business had never been part of the plan, so having a project of my own was both thrilling and significant. It proved to be a turning point: the room gained considerable attention online and in the press and, in many ways, became the catalyst for everything that followed.
It was challenging – and ultimately very rewarding – because the brief required us to design for a multigenerational family, from someone in their eighties to a new baby on the way. The room needed to speak to every generation: to feel warm and familiar, while also being functional and timeless. My emotional connection to it is deeply tied to the moment my clients first saw the finished space – the joy on their faces was everything.
The detail I’m most proud of is the opening we created between the sitting room and dining room. It has become one of the most recognisable elements of the project, and the glazed screen that defines it has since become something of a signature for my studio. By introducing it, we were able to draw light deep into the plan and create a dialogue between the two spaces that simply hadn’t existed before.”
“The dining room in my home in upstate New York contains so many of my favourite things, including art books, a custom handmade hanging mobile, several framed black-and-white photographs and my collection of hand-carved and painted wooden birds. I also have a small antique console table that belonged to the late André Leon Talley, which I bought at a Christie’s auction some years ago.
The many layers I incorporated into the room continue to inspire my work. I love mixing old and new, and bringing contemporary and vintage pieces together to tell a story. Everything feels personal: the room reflects my travels, my love of nature and my passion for texture and pattern. It’s that sense of layering – of objects, memories and influences collected over time – that I continue to return to in my work.”