Studio
A house should be understood before it is decorated.
ALJ Studio was founded in London in 2016 by Anna Lloyd-Jones. The studio designs private homes in London and abroad, with recent projects in Paris, Monaco, Zurich, Gstaad and Dubai, and takes on two to three projects at a time.
Every project starts with the building itself: its proportions, its scale and the way daylight moves through it decide the plan, not the other way round. Working with an old building rather than against it is slower and less obvious than imposing a scheme on it.
From there the work moves into detail: joinery drawn for the room it sits in, stone chosen in person, furniture made rather than bought. Many of our clients collect, and their houses are planned around what they own rather than decorated around it afterwards.
A house has to work as well as look right. Because we are in it for a year or more, we learn how a family actually uses it — which door everyone really comes through, what a kitchen has to absorb on a weekday morning — and the plan is tested against that rather than against a scheme.
Most new projects come by recommendation, and a good number of our clients are still in touch long after the last delivery.
- Founded
- London, 2016
- Projects to date
- London, Paris, Monaco, Zurich, Gstaad, Dubai
- Typical project
- 12–18 months
- Service
- Layouts through to final styling
Anna Lloyd-Jones — Founder
Anna Lloyd-Jones
Anna trained as an architect in Ukraine, completing her studies in London, before moving into interior design — the discipline where the rigour of one and the material attention of the other meet. She spent seven years in high-end residential studios in London before founding ALJ Studio in 2016.
The architectural training still governs how she works. She reads a building before she designs for it: what its proportions want, where the light already falls, which walls are structural and which are merely there. Layouts follow from that, and the scheme follows the layout.
What follows is deliberately slow. Full-size samples made and remade before anything is signed off. Stone selected in person, in the yard, rather than from a sample. Drawers built to the dimensions of what will go in them.
None of that shows in the finished house. It is felt rather than seen — in rooms that are easy to be in, and stay that way long after we have left.