Fern Anderson Interiors, designed for living

Charlotte Anderson and Anna Lea-Wilson run an interior design studio whose work, by any honest measure, was already on the map. Bespoke residential and commercial projects across London, Dublin and the Algarve. Award-winning. The studio sits behind the kind of homes you find written about, and behind a number you do not.

They hold the IDA Gold Award. A few weeks ago, their first furniture collaboration with Paulo Antunes opened the doors at Salone Del Mobile in Milan. That is Fern Anderson Interiors.

When Charlotte first reached out, in November 2025, the studio’s work was a long way ahead of the studio’s brand. The website had been DIY’d and not touched for a very long time. The visual identity was waiting for a well-deserved refresh. The wider presentation, the proposals, the welcome documents, the way the studio was introduced to a new client, all of it was running a step behind the calibre of the work itself.

That is the gap most founder-led studios reach eventually. The work earns the reputation faster than the brand catches up to it.

There is a particular kind of brand problem that comes with founder-led interior design. The category is full of sameness. The same kind of refined serif, muted palette and restrained tone. Standing among that without falling into either of the obvious extremes, overly traditional on one side, stark and overly modern on the other, takes work.

It takes a brand strategy that is willing to slow down before the visual identity arrives, and a creative house that knows the difference between decoration and direction.

Fern Anderson Interiors needed a brand that could carry award-winning, internationally-published work without dressing it up in a category cliché. Warmth, but with restraint. Personality, but with refinement. Architectural understanding visible in the brand itself, not just the floorplan.

The studio’s clients are private, design-literate, often introduced through architects and friends, so the brand had to do the work of credibility quietly.

How we met

The first call came in early November. A second was booked, then politely pushed by a few days, and then by a few weeks. They were busy. There was real work in flight. The brand exercise could wait until they could give it the attention it needed. That is the right answer, and it is also the answer most founders do not give. Most rush. The fact that Charlotte slowed it down on her end, before any of the strategy work began, told us this was a partnership we wanted.

We picked the work back up in January, with the kind of pace that lets a studio breathe.

Strategy before design

The first deliverable was a 35+ page brand strategy presentation. Vision, mission, core values, positioning, audience, personas, competitor analysis, market gap, brand personality, archetypes, tone of voice, brand experience, messaging pillars, creative direction. Slow work. The kind that goes back and forth between us and the founders until the language sounds like the studio.

Fern Anderson Interiors emerged as a founder-led studio designing spaces around how people actually live in them. Not visual statements or trend-led. The brand belief that earned its place at the top of every page of the strategy was the one Charlotte and Anna had been quietly running their studio for years already. Interiors should be designed for living, not just looking.

The brand concept arrived next. A serif wordmark with a small detail that earns a second look, the R and S in Anderson joined together, a quiet mark of collaboration between the two founders. A fern leaf, encased in an oval, refined from a reference Charlotte had loved from the start. A palette of earthy tones; Truffle, Cream, Stone, Sage and Clay, that holds warmth and restraint in the same hand.

A serif for the heading. A modern sans serif for the body. An italicised serif accent that introduces softness in the smaller details, the way the studio layers texture and depth into a room.

Then the guidelines, the brochure, the business cards, the printed touchpoints. and the Squarespace website itself, live by mid-April. A brand world that finally moves at the calibre of the work.

What changed

By late April, the new Fern Anderson Interiors website was live, the brand guidelines were in active use across every studio touchpoint, and the brand was carrying its first international moment of the year, the Paulo Antunes furniture collaboration at Salone Del Mobile. Two things stood out to us about that timing. First, the brand we had built was strong enough to walk into Milan on its first weekend live. Second, that this is what considered work looks like. Quiet. Thorough. Then ready when the moment comes.

The studio’s calibre had not changed. The work was already there. What changed was the way the studio could now be seen.

What is next

There is more to come. Editorial moments, project documentation, photography, award submissions, new collaborations, all of it carried by a brand world that is now strong enough to hold the studio’s ambition over the long term. The website is the spine that everything now travels through.

A note on this kind of work

We get asked, often, what kind of project we go looking for. The honest answer is that we go looking for studios whose work has outpaced their brand. Founder-led, considered, with ambition that has the weight of evidence behind it. A founder who is willing to slow down, do the strategy properly, and trust the brand to carry the calibre of the work.

Charlotte and Anna are exactly that. Fern Anderson Interiors is one of the partnerships we are most proud of this year.