Most of us can remember a place that stayed with us. A hotel that immediately put you at ease. A bar where one drink somehow turned into three. A home that felt warm and welcoming the moment you walked through the door. Years later, we often remember how those places made us feel far more clearly than we remember what they looked like. From our studio in Huddersfield, I work across residential, hospitality and commercial interior design, and while every brief is different, my starting point is rarely how a space should look. It’s how it should feel.
I’ve always been fascinated by that. In fact, fascinated might be putting it mildly. The environment I’m in affects me at a gut level. I notice how a room feels when I walk into it. I notice when something is slightly off, and I notice when everything somehow falls perfectly into place.
I can spend far too long studying a beautifully designed interior. The way light falls across a textured surface. A piece of artwork positioned exactly where it needs to be. A chair that belongs in a room so naturally that you can’t imagine it anywhere else. My family have become very accustomed to me stopping mid-conversation to admire a light fitting or question why something works so well — or why it doesn’t.
The truth is, I love it.
Not because I see design as decoration, but because I genuinely believe our surroundings affect us more than we realise. The places we spend time in shape our experiences. They influence our mood. They affect how we work, how we relax, how we connect with people and how we remember moments.
That’s why I’ve never been particularly interested in chasing trends for the sake of it. That’s not to say trends don’t matter. They do. Particularly in hospitality, commercial and residential interior design, where expectations are constantly evolving and people’s relationship with spaces changes over time. Good designers should be aware of those shifts. They should understand what’s influencing the way people want to live, work, socialise and experience a place. But awareness is different from blindly following fashion.
For me, every project has its own identity, purpose and audience. The challenge isn’t applying the latest trend; it’s understanding whether that trend genuinely belongs there in the first place. The best projects feel relevant, not fashionable. They feel considered rather than copied, and they continue to feel right long after the trend that inspired them has passed. What interests me most is understanding why certain spaces stay with us long after we’ve left them. Why some restaurants feel alive. Why some hotels feel comforting. Why some homes instantly feel like somewhere you belong.
Those questions have followed me throughout my career and, in many ways, they’re the same questions I ask myself every time I start a new design. Working as an interior designer in Huddersfield as part of the Eight_OneTwo team, I have the opportunity to explore those questions across residential, hospitality and commercial projects. Each one is different, but the starting point is remarkably similar: understanding the people who will use the space and the experience we want to create for them.
People often imagine that interior design begins with choosing finishes, fabrics or furniture. For me, it starts much earlier than that. It starts with trying to understand what a space needs to feel like.
How should people experience it?
How should they move through it?
How should it support the people using it?
What should they remember when they leave?
From there, the process becomes a mixture of instinct and exploration. I’ll gather references, build moodboards, test layouts, develop drawings and use CAD and visualisation tools to explore different possibilities. Ideas evolve. Some get stronger. Others get discarded completely. Every project goes through countless iterations before it reaches its final form. But throughout that process, I’m always searching for the same thing: the feeling. I can usually tell when a design is working, and I can definitely tell when it isn’t. Sometimes everything appears right on paper, but something still feels unresolved. The proportions aren’t quite there. The atmosphere isn’t quite there. The story doesn’t feel complete. When that happens, I keep going. I keep refining. I keep testing. Because if that feeling doesn’t show up, I know I haven’t found the right solution yet.
It’s difficult to explain, although I suspect most designers will recognise it. It’s that moment when everything suddenly clicks into place. The layout feels natural. The materials feel right. The lighting works. The space begins to tell the story you hoped it would. And you simply know. Not because a checklist says it’s finished. Because it feels finished.That’s what I’m looking for every time I work on a project, whether it’s a family home, a restaurant, a workplace or a commercial environment. Not just something that looks beautiful in a photograph, but something that people genuinely enjoy being in. Something that supports the way they live, work, gather or unwind. Something that leaves a lasting impression. Because years from now, people probably won’t remember the drawings. They won’t look back at the specifications or the moodboards like I do. They’ll remember how the space made them feel. And for me, that’s always been the goal.
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Sarah
Lead Interior Designer, Eight_OneTwo