The Edit with GOLDEN

Furniture, art and object curation: what are you looking for, and how do you know when something is right?

Kylie: "For us, it's about how a piece performs against the whole brief, not just how it looks. Is the scale and proportion of each piece right for the space? Does it have the right personality for the client? Is it comfortable to actually live with? And does it sit within budget without compromising the rest of the room? We look at furnishing a space holistically rather than piece by piece, investing in a few key items and then building everything else around them, so the balance across the whole room feels considered and like it has been collected over time."

Alicia, what was it like being your own client for Littlewood? Designing for yourself and your family is one thing, but did living through the process change anything about how you approach it for others?

Alicia: "Being my own client was harder than I expected. I debated things far more than I would for anyone else. Decisions I'd usually settle in a day took me weeks. We've lived in eight homes before Littlewood, so I wasn't just designing a house, I was trying to solve every problem we'd ever lived with: hallways that didn't work, rooms we'd outgrown, fixes we'd learned to live around instead of actually fixing.

Watching it get built gave me something I didn't expect, real empathy for what our clients go through. These are significant investments, and there's a point mid-build where the big pieces go in and nothing looks right yet. A stone benchtop sits on its own before the joinery around it is finished. You have to trust the process through that stage, and I understood that properly for the first time. Then, slowly, it all comes together and starts to feel considered.

That experience changed how I work now. I listen more closely at the start of a project, because I know how much sits underneath a client's first answer. I'm also more patient with clients mid-project, because I know how unsettling a half-finished room can feel before everything lands."

Kylie, with your background in visual arts, how much of that still lives in the way you approach a space?

Kylie: "It shapes the whole way I approach a project, more than people might expect. I tend to start from a place of aesthetic and feeling to establish a clear sense of the mood or vision. Cementing that big idea early sets the tone for the studio's approach. From there we layer in a pragmatic and commercial lens. At the end of the day it's about designing homes and commercial spaces that operate with high function but overall feel balanced and not over-designed, and genuinely a nice space to be in."