Interiors should not be the product of ephemeral style trends, but of a client’s own personality and preference. Studio Clementine takes a collaborative approach, both between client and studio, and in terms of the many specialist skills and suppliers our designers bring to a project. We pride ourselves on listening to what people want and then surpassing expectations both creatively and in delivering a seamless, personal service.
ART DECO INFLUENCE IN MODERN LONDON INTERIORS:
TIMELESS DESIGN PRINCIPLES
Art Deco emerged in Paris in the early 1920s, reaching its fullest expression between the wars before being swept aside (at least officially) by Modernism's cooler, more austere proposition. But it never really left. This year marks one hundred years since the movement announced itself to the world at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris—the exhibition that gave Art Deco its name and set out its ambitions with breathtaking confidence. A century on, those ambitions feel not dated but prescient. London, with its particular appetite for grandeur and its vast stock of period buildings, proved especially fertile ground.
Today, as a new generation of designers and clients rediscovers the movement's principles, Art Deco is not so much a revival as a continuous thread, one that runs from the gilded foyers of the 1930s to the most considered contemporary interiors of today.
The London Art Deco Legacy: A City Built for Glamour
London did not invent Art Deco, but it embraced it with an enthusiasm that left a permanent mark on the city's fabric. The movement arrived here in the mid-1920s and flourished through the following decade, producing buildings and interiors that remain among the most admired in Europe.
Claridge's, with its sweeping black-and-white checked floors and sinuous chrome balustrades, became the era's defining statement of luxury hospitality. Eltham Palace, the extraordinary home completed for Stephen and Virginia Courtauld in 1936, demonstrated that Art Deco could meet the English country house tradition not in compromise but in triumph. The Hoover Building on the A40, with its striking facade and coloured glazed tiles, brought Art Deco ambition to industrial architecture. The Michelin Building in Chelsea shows the movement's wit and confidence in every terracotta tile and stained glass panel. And the De La Warr Pavilion, although outside of London has one of my favourite staircases, with its satisfying swooping curves.
But the movement was alive and well far beyond our shores. My personal favourite is Villa Necchi Campiglio in Milan, a masterpiece of Italian rationalism where every detail, from the door handles to the swimming pool, demonstrates Art Deco's perfect marriage of luxury and symmetrical glamour. In New York, the Empire State Building's soaring verticality and the Chrysler Building's extraordinary interior (with their inlaid wood elevators and African marble wall) showed how the movement could achieve monumentality without losing intimacy. And in Paris, where it all began, Coco Chanel's apartment at 31 Rue Cambon remains the ultimate expression of Art Deco sophistication, with the famous mirrored staircase she designed to see the expressions of those in her apartment viewing her collections (or so the story goes).
What made London so receptive? Partly timing: the city emerged from the First World War hungry for optimism, and Art Deco was optimism made physical. The political climate of the 1920s and 30s created a heady mix of post-war relief, economic uncertainty, and the desire to forget the horrors of the trenches, making the perfect conditions for a movement that celebrated luxury, craftsmanship, and the future. There was a deliberate turning away from the Victorian era's heavy ornamentation toward something more streamlined, more modern, yet still unashamedly glamorous.
And partly character: the movement's synthesis of craft and modernity, its reverence for quality materials and skilled making, chimed with London's deep respect for the artisanal. Art Deco was fundamentally about experimentation with craftsmanship and about pushing traditional techniques into new territory. Think of the jewellery designers like Suzanne Belperron, who took the ancient art of gem-setting and created pieces that were sculptural, abstract, utterly contemporary. That same spirit animated interior design: makers were encouraged to try new materials, new finishes, new combinations.
That inheritance shapes contemporary London interiors in ways that are sometimes conscious and sometimes intuitive. I find myself in conversation with Art Deco detail constantly in my work, whether I choose it or not; the proportions of a 1930s apartment, the surviving terrazzo floors of a former department store, the brass door furniture of a Mayfair townhouse all carry the movement's DNA. But the influence runs deeper than the buildings themselves. London's design culture and its appetite for material quality, its comfort with drama, its sense that a room should announce itself owes more to Art Deco than it typically acknowledges.
GEOMETRY AS A DESIGN FOUNDATION: LINES, SYMMETRY AND PATTERN
If Art Deco has a single defining visual characteristic, it is geometry. The movement was besotted with it: with chevrons and stepped forms, with sunbursts and fan shapes, with the interplay of strong verticals and horizontal banding. Where Victorian design had been organic, flowing, nature-derived, Art Deco was angular, precise, architectural.
Symmetry was sacred. Walk into any great Art Deco interior and you'll notice it immediately: the balanced arrangement of elements, the mirror-image composition, the sense that every object has found its proper place in a larger geometric order. This wasn't mere formality, it was a way of creating calm and authority in spaces designed for spectacle and pleasure.
Contemporary London designers have found this visual language remarkably adaptable. The geometric impulse translates fluidly across scales, from the macro level of room proportion and spatial composition to the micro level of hardware, joinery detailing, and textile pattern. In residential projects, we see it in the return of parquet and herringbone flooring, in the revival of geometric tiling in kitchens and bathrooms, in panelled walls that divide space with the clarity of architectural drawing. In hospitality and retail, it appears in grid-pattern ceilings, in the stepped profiles of bar fronts, in display systems that organise merchandise with a rigour that is simultaneously functional and beautiful.
The key to using geometry in a contemporary context is understanding the difference between quotation and principle. Simply reproducing an Art Deco chevron motif across a surface is quotation, while it may be charming, it is essentially costuming. Working from the geometric principle and using strong patterns to define spatial hierarchy, using symmetry to create calm, using angular forms to generate energy is a different and more powerful thing. The latter approach produces spaces that feel rooted in a tradition without being trapped by it.
At Bonadea, geometry operates at several registers simultaneously. The floor combines two tones of hand-laid marble in a bold diamond pattern that anchors the retail floor. Above, a ceiling grid of slim brass members divides the space into defined zones while maintaining visual openness. The result is a room that feels organised, considered, and crucially memorable: guests understand instinctively where to look and how to move through the space.
The CIT Marketing Suite in Belgravia presented a different geometric challenge. Working within the constraints of a ground-floor commercial space that needed to convey both luxury and professionalism, I used geometry as discipline rather than drama. A grid of bespoke wall panels, finished in a warm wood, with metallic details, gives the room its underlying order.
Across both projects, the lesson is the same: geometry is not ornament. It is the primary tool through which Art Deco achieves its particular quality of purposeful grandeur and the sense that every element is exactly where it should be.
THE ART OF THE MATERIAL PALETTE:
LUXURY REIMAGINED
Art Deco was, among other things, a celebration of materials. The movement arrived at a moment when new substances such as Bakelite, chrome and aluminium were becoming available at scale, and when the traditional luxury materials (marble, lacquer, exotic hardwoods, gilt bronze) retained enormous cultural prestige. Art Deco designers embraced both, creating interiors of extraordinary material richness: rooms where the tactile quality of every surface was considered as carefully as its visual character.
What set Art Deco apart was its fearless combination of materials. A single room might feature ebony and ivory inlay, chrome and bronze fittings, marble and leather upholstery, mirror glass and lacquer panels. This wasn't eclecticism for its own sake, but rather a sophisticated understanding that variety in materials creates visual interest and depth. The symmetry of the composition held these diverse elements together, creating unity within complexity.
That material intelligence is one of the movement's most enduring gifts to contemporary design. The Art Deco palette with its golds and silvers, its deep-veined marbles, its lacquered surfaces and mirrored glass has a sensuousness that leaner, more minimal approaches often sacrifice. And in contemporary London, where clients have grown tired of the interminable reign of grey-white-oak-and-concrete, there is a genuine appetite for material warmth and richness.
The contemporary translation, however, requires sensitivity. Wholesale reproduction of the Art Deco material palette can tip quickly into pastiche, a room that looks like a film set for a 1930s melodrama rather than a living, working space for 2025. My approach is selective: identifying which materials carry the Art Deco spirit most powerfully and finding their contemporary equivalents or expressions.
At Bonadea, we combined classic Art Deco tropes in a more contemporary setting. A custom geometric stone floor was developed in the main shop area, its aggregate drawn from a palette of warm pinks and golds that reappear throughout the space. The bar and joinery are finished in multiple different finishes, a style that references the Art Deco tradition of dramatic, layered cabinetwork while remaining entirely contemporary in its precision of application.
The CIT Marketing Suite posed the question of how to achieve material quality in a corporate context where certain traditional luxury materials can feel inappropriately indulgent. The answer was to concentrate quality in the surfaces that guests and clients actually touch. The rosewood joinery finished with starburst veneers, the joinery handles and inlay in nickel, the upholstered seating in a wool bouclé of exceptional quality. The effect is of a space that communicates confidence and investment without ostentation: exactly what a premium marketing environment requires.
In both projects, the guiding principle is the same: layered materials, handled with care and precision, will always outperform a narrow or messy palette. Art Deco understood this. Its interiors achieve their richness not through abundance but through the careful orchestration of a number of materials, each perfect for its purpose.
COLOUR, LIGHT AND ATMOSPHERE: DRAMA WITHOUT EXCESS
Art Deco was not a shy movement. Its colour palette that’s drawn from the bold, saturated tones that characterised the era's fashion, graphics, and fine art, had a confidence that later twentieth-century design largely abandoned. Think of the showgirls at the Folies Bergère, dripping in ostrich feathers dyed shocking pink, electric blue, emerald green, and gold. These weren't subtle colours, they were theatrical, unapologetic and designed to dazzle under stage lights. That same chromatic confidence translated directly into interiors.
Deep teals and peacock blues, burnt amber and terracotta, ivory and jet black, emerald and gold: these were the colours of a movement that believed in making an entrance. The jewel tones were particularly significant, after all they are colours that referenced precious stones and conveyed luxury through association.One of my favourite houses, Villa Necchi Campiglio in Milan is a beautiful display of colour used within art deco design, with warm yellows and greens, perfectly married with Italian stone and satisfying symmetry. Even the veranda looks as though it could have been designed today, with effortless colour drenching creating an elegant, calm space.
They are also, it turns out, the colours of a particular moment in contemporary interior design. Post-pandemic, as people began to reconsider what they wanted from their homes and the spaces they inhabited, the long dominance of pale, neutral palettes started to wane. There is a growing desire for rooms that envelop, that have a colour identity strong enough to create a distinct mood, to make the transition from street to interior feel like an event. Art Deco's chromatic confidence speaks directly to this desire.
The contemporary application of Art Deco colour, however, requires careful handling. The risk is always of tipping from dramatic into oppressive, from confident into garish. The solution lies in understanding how colour, light, and material work together to create atmosphere rather than simply appearance. An Art Deco room is not just a room painted a strong colour; it is a room in which colour, the reflectivity of materials, the quality and direction of light, and the depth of pattern all collaborate to produce a unified sensory experience.
Lighting design is central to this. The Art Deco era was the first to fully exploit artificial electric light as a design element, using uplighting and backlighting as tools for spatial atmosphere rather than mere illumination. Contemporary designers working in the tradition have access to far more sophisticated tools, but the principle remains: light is not something you add to a room after the design is complete. It is a primary material, as fundamental as the walls and floors.
In both cases, the lesson from Art Deco is the same: atmosphere is not an accident. It is the product of deliberate, considered decisions about colour, material, and light made in concert with one another. When those decisions are right, a room does not merely look good; it feels good. It has a quality that visitors notice without necessarily being able to name, an enveloping quality, a sense of completeness.
ART DECO FOR EVERY LONDON HOUSE: ACCESSIBLE PRINCIPLES FOR TODAY
It would be easy, having spent this post in the company of bespoke marble terrazzo, custom lacquerwork, and architecturally designed lighting systems, to conclude that Art Deco influence is the exclusive territory of large budgets and grand spaces. That would be a mistake. The principles that underpin the movement, geometry, material quality, chromatic confidence, and atmospheric lighting are scalable. They apply as meaningfully to a one-bedroom flat in Hackney as to a hospitality flagship in Knightsbridge.
The key is understanding that Art Deco is a sensibility before it is a set of specific objects or finishes. You do not need bespoke joinery to bring geometric thinking to a space; you need only to arrange what you have with intention. A room in which furniture is symmetrically placed, in which rugs and curtains introduce pattern with purpose, in which a single bold colour anchors the palette, already embodies Art Deco principles even without a piece of period furniture in sight.
For those looking to introduce Art Deco influence more tangibly, a few well-chosen interventions will achieve more than a wholesale redecoration. A geometric-framed mirror, a strong sunburst, a stepped octagon, or a bold arch immediately establishes the visual vocabulary. A single wall of wallpaper with a structured, geometric pattern creates definition and drama without overwhelming a small room. Swapping generic chrome or brushed steel hardware for brushed brass throughout a kitchen or bathroom costs little and achieves a great deal. Investing in one genuinely good light fitting, such as a pendant with architectural presence, or a wall sconce with period reference, elevates every other element in the room around it.
Colour is perhaps the most accessible of all the levers. The Art Deco palette offers rich options: deep teal, forest green, warm terracotta, and charcoal with gold accents. These are not fashion colours that will date in three years; they are part of a deeper chromatic tradition that has been beautiful for a century and will remain so.
That, in the end, is the deepest lesson Art Deco has to teach contemporary London interiors. The movement arose in an era of optimism and ambition, shaped by the political and social upheaval of the post-war years, and its confidence shows. But beneath the glamour and the material richness is something more fundamental: a belief that the designed environment matters, that the spaces in which we live and work and eat and drink are worth taking seriously, worth getting right. That belief, perhaps more than any specific aesthetic, is what makes Art Deco timeless. And it is what continues to make it relevant to every London interior, at every scale, in every era.
SERVICES WE OFFER
Studio Clementine provides comprehensive interior design services for residential clients throughout London and beyond. Our work ranges from complete home renovations to commercial projects, always maintaining our commitment to quality, craft, and personal character.
Our services include:
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Full interior design from concept through completion
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Space planning and layout optimization
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Bespoke joinery design and specification
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Furniture, fixture, and equipment (FF&E) sourcing and procurement
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Colour consultation and scheme development
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Collaboration with architects and contractors
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Art and accessories curation
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Project management and site supervision
We work primarily on high-end residential projects but also collaborate on hospitality and commercial spaces when the brief aligns with our aesthetic and approach. Each project receives Georgina's direct involvement regardless of scale, ensuring consistency of vision and quality throughout.
If you're considering an interior design project whether in London or elsewhere, we'd love to discuss how we might work together to create spaces that genuinely reflect your vision and enhance your daily life.
