Property services
Interior Designers
Milanese and English, and a few who work in both registers.
7 studios on the network Lake Como
The material behaves differently here, and that is the whole difficulty. Light bounces off the lake and comes into a room from below as well as above, which flattens colour, exaggerates any unevenness in a wall and takes the life out of textiles far faster than the same fabric would lose it in London or Milan. Humidity does the rest. A house closed from October to May holds moisture in everything soft in it, so linen goes musty, leather blooms, veneers lift, unlacquered brass turns, and iron on a lake-facing terrace rusts through a paint film in a couple of seasons. None of this is a reason to furnish a house cheaply. It is a reason to specify with the closed months in mind: finishes that can be left, textiles that can be lifted and stored, and a scheme that does not depend on twelve months a year of gentle domestic use.
Then there is the question of how anything gets into the building. A village house at Bellagio or Varenna is entered from a stepped lane, up a stone staircase with a tight winder and a door frame that has not changed since the eighteenth century. A waterfront villa may be easier from the lake than from the road. The studios who work here take a measured access survey before they specify, treat the staircase as a hard constraint rather than a detail to solve later, and put a large part of the scheme into joinery built in the room by a local workshop. That is also the reason to keep a good joiner close: the wardrobe that cannot come up the stairs can be made where it stands, and it will fit the wall that is out of square, which the bought one would not have done.
Last, and most contentious, is register. There is a Milanese way of doing these houses, spare, architectural, confident with modern furniture against old plaster, and an English way, softer and more layered, with pattern and lamps and a deep sofa. Both work. What does not work is either one transplanted whole from somewhere else, so that a house on the water is dressed as a flat in Brera or a country house in Hampshire, with no acknowledgement that the room's whole subject is the view out of it. Add the constraints of a protected interior, where a decorative scheme, a stucco ceiling or a stone floor may be listed and where even the route of a new socket has to be agreed, and the studios worth having are the ones who can be disciplined about what the building will allow before they start being imaginative about the rest.
01What they actually do
A scheme that survives being shut up
Specifying finishes, textiles and metalwork for a house that stands closed and damp for most of the year, and setting out what gets stored each autumn.
Fitting the house that exists
Measuring the stair, the door frames and the landing before anything is ordered, and moving to made-on-site joinery where nothing else will go in.
Working inside the heritage consent
Agreeing with the architect and the authority what can be touched in a protected interior: floors, ceilings, decorative schemes, even service routes.
Delivery and installation
Consolidating shipments, arranging what has to arrive by water, and installing in a window that does not collide with the family's arrival.
02How we choose
We look at finished houses two or three years after they were done, and we ask the housekeeper rather than the owner. Housekeepers know which sofa cannot be cleaned, which floor marks, which cupboard door has dropped and which fabric has gone in one winter. A studio whose work still looks right after two closed seasons has understood the lake; a studio whose work photographed beautifully in September and was tired by the following June has not.
Nobody pays to appear here and we take no commission on furniture, fabric or fitting-out placed through anyone on this page. That matters more in this trade than in most, because a designer's income can quietly depend on specifying the supplier who pays them, and an owner has almost no way of seeing it. We ask the studios we list to be explicit with their own clients about how they are remunerated, and we say so here for the same reason.
We drop a studio when the service falls away after the photographs are taken: snagging left unfinished, replacements never chased, a scheme that cannot be maintained by the people who actually look after the house. We also keep this list short on purpose. Seven studios is enough to give any owner a real choice of register, and adding more would mean listing people whose work we have not seen weather.
Interior Designers: questions
How do interior designers on Lake Como charge?
Usually a design fee by stage or by area, then either a management fee on the fitting-out or a stated margin on goods purchased through the studio. We do not publish rates.
The question worth asking is not how much but how: a studio taking a margin on purchases and a studio taking a flat fee have different incentives when they specify. Either is fine as long as it is stated in writing at the start, and as long as you know which one you have agreed to.
Can I furnish a Lake Como house from abroad?
You can, but check the access first. The stair, the door frames and the landing decide what can physically be delivered, and there is rarely anywhere near the house to hold a container.
Two practical points catch most owners. There is often nowhere to store a shipment while the house is still being worked on, so deliveries have to be timed to the week rather than the month. And anything that will not go up the stairs has to come in through a window, over a terrace or off a boat, all of which need arranging and none of which happen on a wet Tuesday in November.
What ruins interiors in a lakeside villa?
Damp in a closed house, and reflected light off the water. Between them they account for most of what fails in the first few years.
The practical answers are unglamorous: background heat and air movement through the winter, textiles that can be lifted and stored, sun protection on the lake elevation, and finishes on metalwork chosen for a marine-adjacent climate rather than for a city flat. A designer who has not asked how the house is closed each autumn has not begun the job.
Do I need an interior designer as well as an architect?
Not always, but on a full renovation the two overlap heavily and the work goes better when both are appointed early and the boundary between them is written down.
Lighting, joinery, bathrooms and service routes belong to both, and on a protected interior they have to be agreed with the heritage consent rather than decided afterwards. Where owners get into difficulty is appointing the designer after the building work is priced, then asking for changes that the consent no longer allows.
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Before you instruct anyone
For people who work on the lake
Are you the bestat what you do here?
The list we introduce from is short and grows slowly: by working with somebody, seeing how a job goes, and only then adding them. If that is the standard you hold yourself to, tell us who you are. We read every one. We check work before we introduce anybody, and no money passes in either direction.
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