Desk appeal: How to create an inspiring office by Britain’s leading interior designers

Offices have come a long way in the past two decades, when many resembled the fictional Slough-based paper merchants Wernham Hogg in the BBC series The Office. The sitcom’s gaffe-prone protagonist, David Brent, was frequently depicted carrying out misjudged practical jokes on a bewildered team held captive in an energy-sapping environment of nylon carpet, faux wood laminate and towering in trays beneath harsh fluorescent lights.

Anyone who wanted to create a more elegant working environment faced an uphill battle against hard drives, monitors and printers, desk phones, Rolodexes, fax machines and battleship-grey filing cabinets. Fast forward to today and, thanks to the advent of cloud storage, powerful slimline laptops and mobile phones, these have now been rendered obsolete. With the greater flexibility ushered in by covid, many offices have been transformed beyond recognition.

On a nondescript stretch of Hammersmith Road in west London stands one of the most aesthetically pleasing examples of this evolution. It would be easy to miss the handsome Grade II-listed house flanked by towering multi-storey office blocks; the property has had various incarnations, including a stint as the home of a now-defunct Conservative club once visited by Winston Churchill, a dance hall and the HQ for a defunct airline.

In 2020, it stood unoccupied, when it was chanced upon by interior designer Beata Heuman and her husband, John Finlay, with whom she runs the business. After a three-year renovation, No 188, Hammersmith Road is now a working studio, an office, a laboratory for trying out new designs and a basement kitchen where the team eats together.

The building also provides a showcase where clients can discover the designer’s approach. ‘I wanted somewhere that had a creative energy rather than a classic showroom environment,’ she says. Her own office is decorated in her Willow Tree wallpaper and furnished with an antique wooden desk surrounded by paintings and pot plants. ‘Where we work affects us so much that I don’t understand why anyone wouldn’t decorate an office properly.’ She cites Nancy Lancaster’s Yellow Room in Sibyl Colefax and John Fowler’s former premises in Mayfair as an inspiring example. ‘Obviously, if you work in the world of design, it makes sense to make an office look as nice as it possibly can.’

Moving east, the headquarters of architectural and interior-design studio Ben Pentreath can be found on Lamb’s Conduit Street in Bloomsbury. What started as a one-person practice in 2004 has expanded to a multidisciplinary team of 50, who work across what their founder describes as a ‘warren of office spaces’ that stretches across buildings, as well as a shop run with the decorative artist Bridie Hall.

‘In the early days, I needed a workspace, and the architect William Smalley needed a flat,’ explains Pentreath. ‘Together, we rented a property on Lamb’s Conduit Street.’ It was the start of a long relationship with the street and its landlord, Rugby School, which owns an eight-acre slice of the area, hence the name of the adjacent Rugby Street.

As the company has grown, Pentreath has accumulated more space, including Lamp Office Court, a double-height room lit with top lights and a hangar-like roof, created by covering over the gardens that sat behind the row of handsome neo-Georgian townhouses, many of which were damaged during the Blitz. ‘If you look at John Rocque’s maps of London, this street was originally residential, but, as the wealthy moved west and north, it became more commercial and many gardens were built over,’ says Pentreath. He thinks the current structure was possibly erected in the 1920s.

Today, it’s where most staff work, with some of the usual trappings of office life: long, shared desks, swivel chairs and desktop monitors. However, compared with offices of old, the space feels personal, thanks to successive trips to New Covent Garden Market to acquire houseplants, various framed architectural drawings on the walls and a lighting scheme designed by Sally Storey of John Cullen Lighting that ensures there’s not a single striplight in the building. Other personal touches include Pentreath’s mother’s studio pottery collection, dating from the 1950s and 1960s.”

‘I think it’s really important to feel visually stimulated, but I’m not hugely in favour of offices that are too curated or polished where computers are hidden away,’ says Pentreath. ‘Some, particularly in America, look like something a Hollywood set designer would create. They have a degree of unreality about them that I find unsettling.’

Lulu Lytle, co-founder of Soane Britain, works in an office above her family home in Bayswater, where she plans new collections of furniture, fabrics and lighting. It’s a fairly recent upgrade from the previous arrangement, which involved hot-desking at the company’s Pimlico Road premises or working at her kitchen table. ‘I’m someone who needs lots of things around me — which isn’t compatible with a functioning family home,’ she says.

The office is an attic flat with a tiny roof terrace where she works alongside her assistant, Isabella Darnton, who has introduced some rigorous discipline. ‘For the first time in my working life, I really appreciate a tidy environment and she has created a clarity I didn’t know I needed.’ Because of its position at the top of the building, access to the office is challenging, so much of the furniture arrived flat-packed. Everything is filed in ordered boxes, with projects stored in specially commissioned wicker baskets made in Somerset and organised by subject: new fabrics, lighting, rattan projects, marketing and so on.

Although there are concessions to modern working methods — she uses a laptop and often works sitting on the sofa next to her dog Panther — there are some processes that date from when she launched the business 30 years ago; letters are still written by hand and she has an archive of antique fabrics dating back to the 17th century within reach. Across one wall is a particular favourite: an Oushak Saph fragment from the late 17th century, from the Ulu Cami of Bursa in western Anatolia. ‘I love to be surrounded by beautiful things,’ she says.

When not travelling from project to project or attending building sites, most of George Saumarez Smith’s work takes place at the Winchester offices of ADAM Architecture, a Grade II*-listed building restored by the team at ADAM in 2011. ‘One of my reference points is the architecture office established by my grandfather Raymond Erith in a ramshackle group of cottages in Dedham, Suffolk,’ explains Saumarez Smith. ‘It was very low key and not at all aligned with the rather grand projects on which he worked. He took Quinlan Terry on as a pupil in the early 1960s and Quinlan’s room, which I visited often, had a writing desk and a drawing board. It was hung with pictures and had a single window — that was my idea of what an architect’s office was.’

Today, he tries to use technology as smartly as possible, but without relying on it completely. ‘I love drawing by hand; it’s only once removed from the physical act of constructing the building itself. That’s how plans originate before becoming digital models.’

In the 15 years of working in his Hampshire base, Hyde House, very little has changed decoratively. A drawing board large enough to carry A0 paper stands by a sash window. On the walls is a large drawing of the building he designed for fine-art dealer Richard Green on London’s New Bond Street in 2011. ‘I’m about to move into a new office, but the principles will remain the same: very little technology, only a long table and an adjustable drawing board, my pencils and my iPad.'

But for a laptop sitting discreetly on an 18th-century table in the corner of the room and flanked by two table lamps, little would give away that the converted saw shed next to the Hampshire home of Country Life's Interiors Editor Giles Kime is, in fact, his office.

As are many country-house annexes, this structure, which spent 50 years as a weaving studio, is now multifunctional, morphing from an entertaining space to a home office. Having distilled his working needs down to three essential components, a laptop, mobile phone and a small library of interiors, architecture and design books, Kime has created the most agile of workspaces. ‘The critical thing is that it’s separate from the main house. I’m lucky enough to have physical and psychological distance between my personal and professional life.’

This feature originally appeared in the October 14, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.