Inside Louisa Grey’s Peaceful House in North London

Louisa Grey is the founder of House of Grey, a studio known for circular salutogenic design: spaces made from natural, fully circular materials that don’t off-gas and feel nourishing to live in.

Her own home — which for now also doubles as an office for the whole team — became the place where these ideas were first tested, inspired by her journey into motherhood and the arrival of her long-awaited son.

There’s warmth everywhere, with soft lines, and plenty of wood, clay, and stone. But it’s better to let Louisa tell the story herself.

In Their Own Words: Louisa Grey on House of Grey, Quiet Living, and Designing for Real Life

My name is Louisa Grey, and I’m the founder of House of Grey. We’re an interior design studio based in London, but we work globally. We specialise in circular salutogenic design — using materials that come from the ground, can return to the ground and help create spaces that feel supportive and healing to live in.

This house feels like a very nurturing space to me. It holds me, it nourishes me, and I designed it to support my busy life (which I try not to make quite so busy). I aim for calm, even though I’m quite proactive by nature.

I’ve lived in this house for over five years now. We bought it during the second lockdown, and although the previous owners had lived here for 50 years, it needed a lot of love and care. By the time we bought it, it had been divided into seven bedsits, and there was much more to put back than I’d anticipated.

The layout is unusual, and I’ve learned to embrace that. It’s a four-storey house, but with four smaller offset floors on one side, so it looks much smaller from the outside. Inside, it’s five bedrooms, three bathrooms, two reception rooms, a lounge room, and two kitchens — though the second kitchen is really a utility space.

Having storage makes daily life feel calmer for me. I like keeping washing and practical things out of the main living areas. There’s a lot of storage here, and it genuinely changes how the house feels day to day.

Becoming a mother reshaped how I see my work. I had fertility issues when trying to conceive my son, and that led me on a very transformative journey. I wanted to approach pregnancy in the most natural way I could, and it made me question the impact of everything I was doing in my life and work.

My motherhood journey is how House of Grey came into being. I wanted to future-proof what I was contributing and make positive change across the board. Each year we work with a charity, and community impact has become central to what we do.