South London creative duo Russell Whitehead and Jordan Cluroe are the two behind 2LG Studio.
The interior design and styling portfolio they’ve amassed is sumptuous. Sensitive but striking uses of colour are met with confident material selections. Their interiors, whilst always unique, consistently ooze a distinct elegance – soft yet warm, comfortable yet stylish.
Ardent bloggers and social sharers, everything they produce is carefully considered yet thoroughly down to earth and approachable for all. Indeed, interacting with their audience is something that they learnt in their formative years prior to becoming interior specialists.
We caught up with them to find out more about how they started off and how they approach projects now that they’re an established and sought after studio.
We’ve known you guys for a good few years since your first visit to the studio but when did you actually start out?
"It's probably fair to say that we started our career in interiors when we met. We have been together 11 years and married six. We both trained as actors and met whilst working as professional actors in London's West End. We worked successfully in this field for 10 years, but we launched 2LG Studio nearly five years ago."
Actors! Well that explains it! So where did the interest in interiors come from?
"We started out in textile design, selling our hand screen-printed textiles in Greenwich Craft Market. Things grew quickly. We were approached by a couple of big stores but realised early on that we didn't want to be making so much as we wanted to be designing. We were also still working as actors, Russ was performing eight shows a week in Chicago the musical so we really had to regroup and decide in which direction we wanted to focus. We had an opportunity to design two suites in a hotel in Kent. They liked what we did and rolled out our scheme meaning we had 20 rooms to design as well as bar, restaurant and foyer. It was a baptism of fire but we knew then what we wanted to do."
Wow, so it was a real career change! It must have felt like a bold new departure, how did you start as Interior Designers?
"We registered our company, set up a website, quit our jobs (called our agents and told them we weren't auditioning anymore) and crossed our fingers! We began working on small residential projects at first to gain experience and have steadily worked on larger projects from there."
It’s been fun to see your practice grow and develop over the years, would you say that now that you’ve established yourselves that you specialise in any particular kind of project or context?
"The majority of our work is residential but we have done a hotel, nine luxury short term lets in East London and also work spaces, so it's pretty broad. In terms of our approach to our design work, we are attracted to working closely with people and that's what really makes us tick. We are also enjoying the amazing opportunities we have had for product design and have been lucky enough to travel to New York this year to launch our first print collection in collaboration with CUSTHOM."
Do you feel the pressure to specialise and give people a ‘label’ for your work or have you always aimed to have a varied set of projects?
"We try not to put ourselves in a box and are open to what comes our way, so long as it is creative. Every project is so different. We are certainly not the kind of studio you come to for a particular 'look'. I think our training as actors really helped us understand people and get under their skin. This, we believe, is one of our most unique approaches to design. We are always concerned with both function and aesthetic. There is no compromise in what we do, we are both perfectionists and have a great work ethic. We always try to over-deliver."
What project/s are you currently working on?
"We have just completed a luxury apartment in Waterloo. It's a small space that packs a punch and is filled with function. We have also recently completed a family home in St. Albans where we doubled the footprint of the house and are currently working on an amazing Arts and Crafts house in Farnham.
"Earlier this year we completely renovated a penthouse apartment in Kew. We love how varied our clients are, it keeps the work interesting.
"We are also continuing to renovate our own Design House Project in South East London, it's our passion project, our muse. We've finished the master bedroom and bathroom and the lounge, but will soon be starting on a big kitchen renovation.
"In September we designed a cafe space/live printing installation for Design Junction at London Design Festival. This was great fun and we really enjoyed creating an interactive element – the walls of the space were made up of the artworks that our team were live printing to showcase our print collection with CUSTHOM."
So many exciting projects in 2017! Do you have anything coming up that you’re excited about for the year to come?
"We are working on some furniture. It's a capsule collection for a great furniture brand that will include a sofa, bed, ottoman and chair. It's a long process but we are loving it! We have also designed a light in collaboration with local design talents, Sarah Colson and William Martin.
"We designed it originally for our Design House Bathroom and we all loved the finished result so much that we are looking for a manufacturer to launch the design. It's called the Silica collection. Next year will also see the launch of our second wallpaper collection that will be available to buy from Graham and Brown."
You mentioned clients before, do you find yourselves working with a particular kind of client?
"Our clients tend to be creative types. Successful in their fields. We often find that we attract brave clients who are open to the process. Every client is completely different. It's like asking how different are you and I. Every process is different, the one constant is us!"
Are there certain traits that you look out for? Their ethics, lifestyle, functional requirements, budget, time scale, etc?
"We try to be really open minded and often end up taking on projects that we know may be challenging as it forces us to be more creative. We work with a variety of budgets, but it really keeps it fun and we try to go with our instincts for the projects and people we will enjoy working with."
How does the process generally begin? How do those connections come about?
"We get asked this all the time! I have no idea. We are super active online, it's important to get into social media and find what works for you and your audience. We never actively chase clients, we just try to put our work out there in the best way we can and the emails come in for enquiries. We are very grateful that we have been very busy and continue to be. We just want to be working creatively with people we love."
What sort of relationship do you have with the client? How much do they inform your choices of layouts, colour, materials, furniture, lighting etc?
"We are always led by our clients. It's not about us pushing our look onto them, it's about us listening to them and guiding them through a series of complicated decisions. We create a strong first concept and build the detail in from there. Sometimes clients want to be involved in that process and sometimes they don't. We are open to both."
Your projects always seem to have a very rich and varied material palette. Are there particular materials that you like to specify/work with?
"We love to find new materials, we recently used Smile Plastics, it’s a recycled material that is so beautiful and can be applied to lots of different things. We also love natural materials like wood and stone. We like materials to be authentic so are not keen on faux anything except of course fur or leather (we are vegan). We have been loving a bit of Valchromat too recently. We just installed an entire bespoke bedroom pod that we designed with a platform bed, storage and a built-in velvet headboard. The overall look was like a minimal, soft concrete pod."
How do you source materials?
"We are constantly on the hunt for new materials and you can seek inspiration everywhere. We get more and more things made bespoke as it's often the only way to incorporate new materials. It's also a great way of giving your clients something personal to them. We love to work with young artists and rising designers to get surfaces made. Like Olivia Aspinall who does amazing work with Jesmonite, or Graham Made who makes incredible surfaces with concrete."
Do you have any favourite materials or new material discoveries that you’d like to get onto a scheme but haven’t managed to yet?
"Yes always. We have a library of things that we have found that we haven't yet found the right client for! Like an amazing material made from coffee waste. It can be moulded into forms like chairs or used as surfaces. We are also doing research into new vegan materials at the moment. It's an area that is very important to us and is set to grow massively in 2018."
Do you ever have to change materials on a specification because of client preference?
"Not often. By the time it gets to ordering clients have usually seen a sample big enough to sign off. It's happened once... we wanted the clients to have a pair of pink sinks... granted we were pushing their boundaries! That is part of our job, to get people outside of their comfort zone. We ended up going with black and it still looked amazing."
Do you ever specify materials with recycled content? Is this important to you?
"Yes, often. It should be more important to more people. We have recently come across an amazing leather substitute that is made of waste pineapple leaves called Pinatex. It's always hard to get people to buy into something new, but it's about trust and once you have gained that it gets easier to encourage people to take risks. We try to get the clients into the story of new materials so that they can get emotionally involved in it."
Do you think there are any ways to develop greater understanding, and with it, appreciation of materials with recycled content that might encourage clients to seek and use such materials?
"Knowledge and preconception. In the past there has been an image of natural or recycled materials being seen as 'hippy' or not cool, but actually, it's our job as designers to use such materials in a chic and luxuriously designed way to show people how exciting and creative they can be! That's the best part of our job, helping to facilitate the use of new ideas and the future of what interior spaces can be."
