Laura Hammett: Blending Family, Business, and Design
EXPERTS 15.10.24
Laura Hammett, Creative Director of the eponymous London-based interior, architecture and design studio, talks to us about balancing family life alongside an established company and a growing furniture, lighting and accessory business.
Q: Why did you decide to set up your own Interior Design Studio?
It was a happy accident! After a short stint at a design practice, I suddenly needed to find a way to work from home (before it was ever a thing) for family reasons, my younger sister was going through a personal tragedy and needed my support. Selling hand-sewn homeware pieces on ebay led to a pop up shop with an art-dealer friend (which we blagged rent free from a local guy with a derelict shop), which led to giving interiors advice and small design projects, which eventually led to my first developer project. In a nutshell! Looking back now I realise I did have that entrepreneurial drive, but found it by necessity.
Q: Was there any key moment that transformed your Interior Design business into the success it has become today?
Bringing my husband, Aaron on board. He quit his product design job when I was pregnant with our first child so he could continue the business while I went on maternity leave. This forced us to hire our first employee and we got bigger and better jobs as time went on.
Q: You run your design business with your husband Aaron, how do you work together and have there been any challenges?
The balance of our skills actually works perfectly. I’ve always been about the big picture and Aaron is all about the details and that makes for a pretty good team in design and business. Of course it’s a challenge to separate work and life when you’re a husband and wife team, but I actually find that separation easier now and I don’t feel the need to come home and update Aaron on everything that’s happening in the business, as he already knows! I couldn’t picture it any other way.
Q: The design studio is based in West London and you now live in Hampshire. Why did you decide to move out of London and how has that decision affected your business, if at all?
I never thought we would be in a position to move permanently to the country, as the demands of running a business in the city meant our focus and time had to remain centred on London. Regardless of this, I still harboured a dream of moving the children to a picturesque rural village and enjoying a more tranquil, balanced lifestyle. Then, in 2020 the situation changed when lockdown hit, which was for us as I expect it was for so many, an extremely challenging time. It did however show us the success and possibilities of remote working, and we had confidence that we could effectively run our design studio in London and live a more idyllic existence. It strikes a perfect harmony between rural serenity and the sense of community I so longingly desired. And within an easy commute to London, if anything has enhanced how we run the business!
Q: How would you describe your interior style?
Timeless, elegant, comfortable.
Q: Have you ever had a client who had a completely different aesthetic to you and how did you cope with this?
Absolutely. We currently have a handful of projects in the Middle East, which are vast family villas with breathtakingly grand architecture that we’ve enjoyed using as a design guide for the interiors. The brief for the interiors is centred around bringing the client’s personal cultural influences into the design, whilst honouring the exterior. We have added in further layers of opulence with rich jewel colours, intricate patterning, embroidery and detailing. We are really enjoying the process of researching, learning and designing to a different brief, whilst retaining the Laura Hammett design principles.
Q: You have worked on projects around the world - do you try to bring in the local culture to the interiors you work on?
Yes, obviously different client’s lean into different aspects of culture and how they personally utilise each space, so we’re heavily led by them on the level of implementation, but we always research cultural nuances and preferences for each project so that we can subtly inject them into our designs. Feng shui acts as a huge driving force in some of our projects, whilst having the knowledge that certain colours and motifs have different meanings to different cultures allows us to design sensitively.
We tend to draw on the nature found around our projects, and that’s no different to projects around the world. Whether that’s using the sea, or desert like we have done in the Middle Eastern projects. We would utilise motifs and design elements that can be found in local nature. Rather than using a wallpaper with embroidered oak leaf details that we might use in a British project, we would use flowers or plant’s native to the Middle East.
Q: Running your own business is never linear, can you please share with us your highs and lows?
Highs came often early on in the journey as everything is new and you’re just happy to have achieved something which surpasses what you ever thought was possible! Getting our first developer client and finding out we were going to be working on a beautiful mews house in Belgravia was a moment I’ll never forget. Aaron and I sat and worked on the pitch for hours every evening at our dining room table and it was an amazing moment finding out we got the job.
Highs now feel much the same actually. Launching Laura Hammett Living quite literally made me burst into tears the moment we went live! You feel like the same person, but with a lot more experience and confidence in knowing exactly what you’re doing, but the feeling of achievement is just as satisfying. Lows come when I feel like I’m sacrificing time spent with my family and children to do something necessary for the business. You can’t win, because you just have to do these things for the business to thrive too. I hope that one day they can look at what Aaron and I have built and understand why mum and dad had to do emails on holiday!
Q: It is really exciting to see that you have launched another business called Laura Hammett Living - please tell us more about it and why you started it?
Before Laura Hammett Interiors evolved into a design studio, it started as a very small-scale homeware website back in 2008, where I sold my handmade cushions. When I was running that from my kitchen table, the thought of a venture such as Laura Hammett Living seemed a rather unattainable dream. So, launching my own collection last year feels like a real full-circle-moment from that first homeware website in a way. As designers we have to source a huge collection of styling pieces to layer a whole home with and this is where I often struggled to source pieces which mirrored our design style, and where the idea for starting Laura Hammett Living was born from. Over the years I really saw a gap in this industry for exquisitely designed, top-quality homewares, but at a very accessible level, available to all and not just trade and interior designers.
With Laura Hammett Living I have taken over 15 years of experience from working in the high end residential Interior Design sector and translated everything I know into product design. It is so important for us to understand what our clients like and what they wish for in their family homes. So I wanted to create beautiful, unique designs unlike anything available on the market, crafted from the highest-quality materials, with practicality and durability at the core of the design. In September we launched our first furniture and lighting collections and I can’t wait to see where we can take LHL in the future.
Q. The home collections are exceptionally beautiful and well made. Where does your inspiration come from?
My work. When you’re surrounded by designs, drawings, samples and have spent hours sourcing products, you know what you like and what you don’t like and what’s needed on the market. Quality is everything to me, and its beautiful craftsmanship which sets apart a good design. That’s what I'm striving to achieve with Laura Hammett Living.
Q: Can you talk us through your favourite pieces and why you love them?
I think my favourite piece is the first furniture designs I drew, the Fabian cabinet. It’s so unique, and the antiqued brass patina finish went through so many rounds of development to perfect it. It feels like a design which sums up my love for blending classic and contemporary, with nods to both past and present which makes it feel vintage and modern at the same time. I love that it could feel at home in both a manor house or a contemporary apartment. The craftsmanship that goes into its curves and elegant silhouette just blows me away. It’s a design I'm really proud of. And the best bit about the Fabian is the corresponding Fabian bedside table, slightly different in it’s shape and materials, same elegance just in bedside form.
Q: Having a business that sells products instead of services is quite different - what have you discovered about yourself during the journey?
That I’m even more of a perfectionist than I ever realised! I’m closely involved in every aspect of the development process, from design, to first samples, final sign offs, I’m at every marketing photoshoot styling the space, checking website photography and it’s all got to be perfect. Luckily my small but mighty LHL team also has the same standards, so I’m really proud of what we’ve created- I won’t call it perfect but it’s pretty close! I’ve also learnt a lot more about ecommerce business, now I’m involved in talks about stock, shipping, packaging, SEO, customer service and website design! I find it so interesting.
Q: You have children, a husband, a home and two businesses to run, how do you do it all? Any secrets you can share?
There are no secrets. It’s hard work, surrounding yourself with people who have the same goal as you, taking risks, stress, sacrificing time and energy to build and grow the business. But at the same time it’s always remembering what’s important, why you’re doing it and making sure you’re enjoying it along the way!
Q: If you could give one piece of advice to your 20 year self, what would that be?
Have confidence in your abilities, trust your gut instincts and don’t be too hyper-focused on the next step to appreciate and enjoy what you've already achieved.
