Interior Designers in Bristol
Design Seven is an interior design studio at Wick, on the Bath Road at the eastern edge of Bristol. We work on private homes across Bristol and Bath, and we design and dress show homes for housebuilders across the UK.
The studio is director-led. Creative direction sits with Paul Garland, a BIID Registered Designer, and the person running your project is the person you speak to. There is no account layer in between.
Interior design for homes in Bristol and Bath
Private work usually arrives in one of three shapes.
A whole house. Often after a move or a renovation, when the building is finished and nothing in it has been decided. We resolve the space plan, circulation and sightlines first, then set colour, material and finishes as one language across the house so the scheme holds from the hallway to the back bedroom.
A single room. A sitting room that has never quite worked, a bedroom furnished in a hurry, a kitchen diner where the seating is fighting the door. One room is a real project and we take it as one.
Curtains, blinds and lighting. Measured on site, specified and installed. This is the quickest way to change how a room reads, and it is the part most often left until last.
Curtains and blinds, measured and fitted
Ready made curtains hang short and hang thin. A blind fitted inside the reveal makes the window look smaller than it is. Both are common, and both are fixable.
Hang the pole higher and wider than the opening and the window reads taller and the wall reads calmer. Fabric weight does as much work as position. A lined curtain falls in a column and holds its shape, an unlined one creases from the first week. Full length nearly always beats sill length, even in a small room, because the eye follows the line to the floor.
We measure, specify, order and install. For most homes in Bristol and Bath this is a matter of weeks.
New build homes
Most of our work is show homes, which means we furnish empty new builds to a deadline for a living. Several hundred of them.
That experience transfers directly to a house someone has just bought. A new build hands over with a grid of downlights on one switch, hard floors, fresh plaster and no soft surfaces anywhere, which is why the first week in one sounds like a swimming pool and looks like a showroom after hours. Those are specification problems with specification answers.
We write about this regularly in our journal, including what to do first in a new build, why the single ceiling light is the first thing to fix and how to stop a new build echoing.
Show homes for housebuilders
Full delivery from concept to launch day: design direction, space planning, lighting, finishes, furniture, accessories and final dressing, run as one programme with measurement, procurement, logistics and installation.
We have delivered show homes for Bloor Homes, Crest Nicholson, YTL Developments, Barratt Homes, Riverdale Developments, Roffey Homes, Newland Homes and Stonewood Homes.
Some of that work is close to home. The Coanda at Brabazon for YTL Developments sits on the former Filton airfield, where Concorde was built, and leans on bespoke joinery and a hand painted mural held together by an open plan ground floor that had to read clearly from the front door. At Netherton Grange in Nailsea we designed The Evesham for Crest Nicholson, a three bed semi built around cobalt blue and warm ochre against soft neutrals.
Other projects take us further: Meadow Gate for Roffey Homes in Angmering, The Nestle Apartments for Barratt London at Hayes Village, and Chimes, a penthouse in central London for Pegasus Homes.
How we work
Every project starts with the building and the brief rather than a mood board. A room that is arranged badly cannot be rescued by what goes into it, so the plan comes first.
Specification is disciplined. Materials are chosen for how they will look after a year of use, not for how they look on the day they arrive. Measurement, procurement, delivery and installation are coordinated by us, and we are there on install rather than sending a schedule and hoping.
The standard is the same whether the client is a national housebuilder or a family in a house in Redland. The home should read clearly, photograph cleanly and feel believable in person.
Where we work
The studio is at Greenway Farm on the Bath Road at Wick, about twenty minutes from the centre of Bristol and twenty from the centre of Bath.
We take on private work across Bristol and the surrounding area, including Clifton, Redland, Bishopston, Southville, Keynsham, Saltford, Portishead, Nailsea, Thornbury and Chipping Sodbury, and across Bath, North Somerset, South Gloucestershire and Wiltshire. Developer projects take us nationally.
Talk to us
If you have a house you are stuck on, a room that has never worked, or windows that need doing properly, tell us about it.
Design Seven 12B Greenway Farm, Bath Road, Wick, Bristol, BS30 5RL 0117 450 6707 designseven.co.uk