Buy slowly
A half-empty room you like beats a full one you settled for. Nothing here has a deadline.
About
I’m Sara, and I’ve spent nine years rearranging other people’s rooms.
Somewhere between a client’s third sofa and my own fifth apartment, I noticed that the advice that actually works rarely makes it into magazines. So I started writing it down here.
How I got here
I’m 31, and nine of those years have gone into interiors — long enough to have firm opinions, not long enough to be precious about them. I started at 22 as an assistant in a small studio, where my job was mostly sourcing fabric samples and redrawing other people’s floor plans. It taught me more about how rooms actually work than any course did.
Most of that work has been in ordinary homes: rentals with beige walls, flats where the sofa only fits one way, bathrooms nobody would photograph. That’s where I learned the thing I keep repeating — a room rarely needs more. It needs the few things already in it, placed better.
Luxenooks is where all of that goes now. The pairings that worked, the ones that didn’t, and the small changes I keep recommending because they keep working.
What I believe about rooms
Light before furniture
Three well-placed lamps change a room more than a new sofa, and cost a tenth as much.
Leave one corner unfinished
A perfectly resolved room has nowhere left to go. Keep somewhere for next season’s idea.
Rooms are for living in
If a chair is too precious to sit in, it stopped being design and became decoration.
The short version
Based in Washington
Years in designNine, and counting
Favourite room to styleBedrooms, always
Least favouriteAnything with a feature wall
Always in my cartLinen, lamps, one more plant
Can’t work withoutDaylight and cold coffee
Where to next
Pick a room and start there
Bedrooms, kitchens, hallways, the balcony you keep meaning to sort out — it all gets the same treatment here. Start with whichever one is bothering you most.