28th July 2026 | IN DESIGN ADVICE | BY SBID Share Tweet Pinterest LinkedIn Bruna Spahiu, Founder & Design Director of Baucroft Design, has given her insights into the industry. I am the founder of Baucroft, a London based interior architecture studio. My education in architecture, together with years of practice, has drawn my focus towards the interior world, the point at which a building becomes a lived experience. The studio bridges the technical and the aesthetic: we guide residential projects from planning and building regulations through interior design to construction under one roof, ensuring the design intent is protected from concept to completion. Baucroft’s interiors are defined by quiet aesthetics, natural materials, considered proportions and restraint over trend. Our expertise lies predominantly in residential refurbishments and new interiors across London and the Home Counties, alongside international projects across Europe, with ambitions to extend our work to the Middle East and beyond. Baucroft Design Why did you want to work in the interior design profession? My route into interiors was through architecture. However, what drew me from the beginning was the point where the technical and the sensory meet, where a detail on a drawing becomes something you touch every day. I was never satisfied designing a building and handing the inside over like an empty shell; the shell and the interior are one continuous idea, and separating them always felt like an unfinished sentence. Interior design, for me, is where a project becomes personal and intentional. It is the layer of a building that people actually live with, the light, the materials, the proportions of a room at eye level, and I wanted to be responsible for that layer, not just the structure holding it up. Baucroft Design Which elements of your profession do you enjoy the most? Material selection, without question. There is a particular pleasure in composing a palette of oak against honed stone, linen and unlacquered brass, and knowing how those surfaces will age together over a decade, not just how they photograph on day one. Because Baucroft carries projects through to construction, I also genuinely enjoy the delivery stage. Watching a schedule of materials become a physical room, and being on site to make the small judgement calls that protect the design intent, is deeply satisfying. And I enjoy the client relationship itself: earning the trust that allows you to say less is enough, and then delivering a space that proves it. Baucroft Design What has been your most memorable career highlight from the past year? Completing a house refurbishment in Buckinghamshire, has been the defining moment of our year. We held the project from the first planning drawings through to the final handover, reconfiguring the ground floor around natural light, and carrying one restrained palette, through every room so the house reads as a single, calm idea. What made it memorable was not the finished photography but the handover itself. The client paused in the open plan kitchen, ran a hand along the joinery, and said the house finally felt like theirs. That response is the entire point of the profession. And this quarter brought a second milestone: joining the SBID community through accreditation, an independent benchmark of the standard we hold ourselves to and the start of a new chapter for Baucroft. Baucroft Design What are your favourite types of projects to work on and why? Full residential refurbishments where we hold the project from planning through to completion. When the studio is responsible for the architecture, the interior and the delivery, nothing is lost in translation, the junction detail drawn in month one survives to handover, and the material palette is protected from a hundred small substitutions. I am especially drawn to projects with a quiet brief, clients who want restraint, longevity and a home that feels resolved rather than decorated. London’s housing stock suits this beautifully. There is real satisfaction in taking a tired Edwardian or interwar house and giving it a calm, contemporary interior that still respects the building’s bones. On the other hand we want to explore further into hospitality, having project briefs like luxurious hotels in Spain, is a very exciting step stone into the high- end world of interiors. Baucroft Design What are the most challenging aspects of working in interior design? Protecting design intent through the realities of construction. A scheme can be impeccable on paper and still be undone by a substituted material, a compressed programme or a detail value-engineered away, which is partly why we carry our projects through to delivery ourselves. The regulatory landscape is another constant challenge: planning timelines, building regulations and, increasingly, sustainability requirements all have to be woven into the design process early rather than bolted on. And there is the quieter challenge of managing expectations in an image saturated market. Clients arrive with folders of references; part of the job is translating that inspiration into something coherent, buildable and genuinely theirs, which sometimes means gently editing out as much as we add. Baucroft Design What do you wish you knew before working in the field? That the profession is as much about communication as it is about design. Early on, I assumed the quality of the work would speak for itself; in practice, a project succeeds because of how clearly you explain decisions to clients, contractors, planners and suppliers at every stage. I also underestimated how much of running a studio sits outside design: fee proposals, programmes, cash flow, insurances, pre-qualification platforms. None of it is taught in enough depth, and all of it determines whether good design ever reaches the site. Lastly, I wish I had known how long the quiet, unglamorous years last, and that they are not a detour from the career, they are the foundation of it. Baucroft Design If you could give one tip to aspiring designers, what would it be? Learn how buildings are actually put together. Spend time on site, understand construction sequencing, read the manufacturer’s literature, ask the joiner why a detail will not work. Taste can be developed and software can be learned, but the designers who earn lasting trust are the ones whose ideas survive contact with a building site. Technical fluency is also what gives you creative freedom; you can only bend the rules confidently once you understand them. And a smaller, related tip: develop a point of view and hold it. A clear, consistent design language, applied with discipline, will serve you far better than chasing every passing trend. Baucroft Design How do you see the interior design industry evolving in the year ahead? I expect the movement towards longevity to strengthen. Clients are increasingly asking how a space will feel in ten years, which favours natural materials, repairable finishes and restrained, well-made interiors over disposable styling or seasonal trends. Sustainability will continue shifting from a marketing line to a technical requirement, embedded in planning and building regulations, and designers who understand that framework will be at a real advantage. I also think the boundary between design and delivery will keep blurring: clients want fewer hand-offs and a single accountable team, which plays to integrated studios. And while AI and digital tools will streamline the production side of practice, I believe they will make the genuinely human elements of judgement, taste and trust more valuable, not less. Baucroft Design Bruna Spahiu, Founder & Design Director of Baucroft Design What does being an SBID Accredited Interior Designer mean to you? It means accountability. Accreditation is a public commitment to a standard of competence, professional conduct and continuing development, and I find that clarifying rather than constraining. For clients, it offers reassurance in an unregulated profession: an independent confirmation that the studio they are trusting with their home meets a recognised benchmark. For me personally, it connects Baucroft to a wider professional community, which matters when you lead a studio; the exchange of knowledge, standards and peer support is something a small practice cannot generate alone. Above all, it reflects how I want the profession itself to be seen, not as decoration, but as a discipline with real technical and ethical weight. About Baucroft Design Baucroft is a design studio specialising in refined, quietly luxurious interiors. Led by architectural thinking and delivered by an experienced in house team, the studio takes projects seamlessly from first concept to final styling. Every scheme is shaped around how its owners live, expressed through a restrained palette of natural materials: warm timber, honed stone, soft linen and considered light. From full-house transformations to bespoke hospitality interiors, retail spaces, Baucroft brings precision, craftsmanship and calm to every detail. The result is interiors that feel effortless, timeless and unmistakably personal, designed once and made to last. Visit Profile If you’d like to feature your news or stories on SBID.org, get in touch to find out more. If you’d like to become SBID Accredited, click here for more information.