I visited WOW!house 2026 at Design Centre Chelsea Harbour a couple of weeks ago. Twenty-two rooms, each complete from concept to the last accessory, with every designer given the authority to fully finish what they started. This is something we rarely get to experience in real life, beyond photographs, and as a finished whole.

The room I keep coming back to is Sara Cosgrove’s Morning Room.

It is arresting on entry because it is relatively spare – quiet even. I notice that some visitors move through quite quickly to the next space. To those who pause and inhabit it however, the room reveals itself.

Walls are wrapped in Phillip Jeffries’ ‘Aura’ wallcovering, a glazed mural whose matte and gloss surfaces shift with the light. Standing in the centre, you’re looking at something that appears almost mobile without moving. Aqua, which alone might feel overly cool, is softened by lilac tones. Cosgrove described her concept as the opposite of sensory overload – a retreat from the velocity of modern life. A room for slower things: reading, thinking, long mornings.

The functional elements to allow these actions are there: a sofa, a desk and chair, layered lighting, a folding screen that could give additional privacy. What makes the room beautiful and so satisfying to be in isn’t any single piece. It’s the relationship between them, and the space each one is given.

The woven surface of the screen panels adds an almost cosy detail within the spareness, supplying practicality and visual anchor in one piece. The side table beside the sofa holds a small collection of objects – shells and glass and a plant – each positioned so that nothing competes. A starfish study hangs on the wall, a smaller landscape below it; personal without being cluttered.

 

Then there is the desk: modest in scale, with tactile draw fronts and crystal pulls, an open sketchbook, a sculptural lamp. Above hangs a large, slightly convex gold disc. From across the room this is a focal point, suggestive of pale morning sun. It reflects the sky-like walls and the ambient light – all that aqua-lilac cloud. Sit at the desk and the reflection shifts entirely: warmer, richer, pulling in the room’s lighting and detail around you. The same object, two completely different experiences depending on where you are.

That’s what I mean when I talk about designing for occupiers rather than for photographs. A great room reveals things to you as you move through it and settle into it. The best decisions in this space were as much about restraint (what to leave out, where to give things room to breathe) as they were about what to include.

The principles here aren’t exclusive to showhouse budgets. Understanding that a room is experienced over time, from different positions, in different lights, is something we design for deliberately, particularly when spaces house multiple functions. And knowing which single object earns pride of place is the same skill whether the budget is significant or not.

This is what we’re working towards with every project.

A recent sitting room project asked us to balance a lot: TV & media storage, bookshelves, display, and enough seating for the whole family at Christmas. We introduced a fireplace on the focal wall then deliberately pared back the adjacent joinery to let it breathe. Textural interest and display opportunities found their place elsewhere in the room. The result is warm in every sense without being busy.

The Morning Room is, honestly, my dream working space. It also strengthened my view that when working with clients whose homes have reached a new chapter (the children gone, the rooms waiting to be claimed back) our job is not to create a sense of ‘more’. It’s to find something more considered: Spaces that feel like them again, and give back rather than just containing life. That’s a brief worth getting exactly right.

The experience of the person who lives there comes first, always – before the camera, before the trend, before the clever concept. This room reminded me why.