Lucy Goldbart on Creating Homes That Actually Feel Like Home

Liezel Britz

You are listening to the FCI London podcast featuring some of London's most influential designers. If you are new or you don't know much about interior design, but you feel like your house really needs some help, you know, be it in a small or a big way, this podcast is for you. I'm your host, Liezel Britz. And today I'm speaking to the renowned interior designer, Lucy Goldbart. She has her own luxury design studio, Lucy Goldbart Interior Design which she founded in 2022. She's known for her signature style of effortlessly cool luxury. She has recently also been named one of Homes and Gardens Top 25 Next in Design for 2025 and is a finalist in this year's SBID International Design Awards.

Lucy, welcome. We are delighted to have you with us today.

Lucy Goldbart

Thank you so much for having me. It's lovely to be here. I really appreciate you inviting me to talk.

Liezel Britz

We're really looking forward to it. Well, let's maybe start with a few introductory questions just about who you are, how you got to where you are today in the luxury design world. If you could give us some background.

Lucy Goldbart

Sure, so I set up, as you kind of mentioned, I set up my company almost four years ago. My background has always been in ultra high-end luxury interior design. I worked for two of the top UK design studios before setting up my company. We've always worked in I've always kind of specialised in high-end luxury, but I've done a lot of projects abroad as well. So we work in the UK, but also through kind of internationally. So we have projects at the moment in Antigua, in Miami, and then a few in London, in Chelsea and Little Venice as well.

Liezel Britz

Okay, so you must travel quite a lot for your work.

Lucy Goldbart

I do, yeah. We try and keep the of the travel to what is actually required for the projects. So I'm probably every every couple of months I'm off to see some to see our sites. It's interesting at the start of our projects because we do a lot of new builds. So we work on a lot of projects which are maybe three or four years in the making.

Liezel Britz

We are.

Lucy Goldbart

so we'll try and go out and meet the clients at the beginning. And then we like to do any presentations in person. But apart from that, actually we'll find that for the first year or so, we don't need to go out there because we are, well, the builders are, you know, laying foundations, laying the groundwork and we don't really need to be out there to see that. So that's kind of more of a down period. But then the last year or so of the project where, where we're working on the fit out and the tiles go in, the materials finishes, et cetera. That's when we're out there a lot more. So that's when we were out there every couple of months. Which is actually the soul of our projects at the moment.

Liezel Britz

Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah, in terms of your own studio, was there maybe a defining moment where you knew like, this is what I want to do, I want to open my own studio.

Lucy Goldbart

I'd always known I wanted to be an interior designer, but I think I didn't know I wanted to have my own studio probably until I was given the opportunity to actually run my own project at my previous companies. So I was quite lucky actually. When I started out as a junior at my first job, I was working underneath a senior designer with a lot more experience than me.

She was running a variety of projects and I was obviously, you know, very junior helping as kind of backup support. She actually then, her name was Steph, she moved back to Australia and I was quite lucky she wasn't actually replaced for about a year. So in that interim, I was given the opportunity to take over and run those projects. Absolutely. And I think it was one of those single swim moments and go, my gosh, this is Overwhelming. Or you step up to the plate. I think I just, I loved the responsibility. I loved the ownership of the projects, having kind of full creative control. And we're designing people's homes. It's not a responsibility that I take lightly, but I liked that pressure. Yeah, so it made me realise that one day I'd want my own studio. Kind of then I was just really waiting for the right opportunity, which came around, you know eight or so years later.

Liezel Britz

Wow, that's awesome. And maybe just for yourself, did you always know you mentioned you knew you wanted to be an interior designer? Is that what you've always wanted to be? Or was it sort of a winding road for you to get to where you are today?

Lucy Goldbart

I think so. I mean, I'd always loved those home renovation programs when I was younger - kind of changing rooms. They were my favorite programs. I used to kind of constantly redecorate my room the whole time. yeah, I think I'd always known that I wanted to do something to do with interior design. And then many years ago, I lived in Paris for a while and I spent my weekends pretty much just roaming the streets of Paris, like admiring the architecture, soaking it all up and also spending far too much time in the flea markets of Paris, where I just collected lots and lots of kind of vintage pieces of furniture that didn't really fit in my like Parisian studio apartment. I love to collect like fabulous pieces and I thought I'd use them somewhere and that I think cemented it for me. This is what I want to do 100%.

Lucy Goldbart

Yeah, I think we do, we like to evoke that sort of effortless sort of California cool luxury vibe in our projects. I think what that means to me is that a space should feel not just beautiful, but also comfortable and livable. So we see so many pictures online of very pretty spaces, but they're not that practical. And they're also, they feel almost picture perfect, like you shouldn't touch anything in them. They're a hotel.

We design people's homes, we want people to feel comfortable. We want them to feel like they can sort of kick off their shoes and relax. And so I think people's homes should feel not just beautiful, but also kind of cool and edgy and like an interesting person lives there. I think, yeah, the way we probably do that is we blend, I'd say, earthy, warm, minimalist palettes with sort of maximalist form.

So we really like to play up with like fun shapes, sort of volume. And then we kind of play it a little bit, of play down the color, probably color and pattern so that we can have more fun with, you know, yeah, with shape and form. And I think that gives more pockets of interest and makes the space seem more interesting and a bit more

Liezel Britz

Yeah. But it still should feel sophisticated and yeah. Yeah.

Luxy Golbart

And I think we'll use practical materials. So even if we have a client who to have, you know, a very light airy creamy palette, like home with a cream palette, we'll make sure that the

Liezel Britz

Yeah. But it still should feel sophisticated and yeah. Yeah.

Lucy Goldbart

cream fabric on your sofa is, you know, Scotchgarded-Gardener to stainproofy improved, or we might use an outdoor fabric so that you need to worry if the kids are it's going to come in with, you know, colouring pencils. And like, you know, that's... You've got to be able to relax in them. Also using natural materials, I'm going on, but I think using natural materials makes a big difference. It makes you feel more calm. We don't use massive masses amounts.

Liezel Britz

Yeah.

Lucy Goldbart

of amounts of like metals or shiny surfaces. We used lots of natural woods, lime wash and plasters, things that are inherently natural and feel a bit more casual.

Liezel Britz

And how do you adjust that approach to different clients? Iif I can say it like that, which questions do you ask your clients to get behind what is in their mind for a space?

Lucy Goldbart

We start every project with a super in-depth briefing and that's kind of split into two aspects.

So one is the aesthetic is what do you love? Do you have any inspiration images you want to share with us? Are there images that you love or are there colours that you love? Things like that. And then we also, the other part is we ask how do you want to feel in this space? Like how will you live?

What are your routines? Do you want to wait If you have a large family home, do you want to wake up in the morning and have a moment of peace and quiet before you see the kids? Do you want to relax with your coffee? If you do, then you probably don't want to have to go downstairs, sit in the kitchen in order to have your coffee because they're to be screaming around and that's amazing, but you might want 10 minutes of peace just before you go downstairs.

A lot of our clients are like that. And if that is the case, then we try and integrate like a small coffee station in the bedroom. A bit like if you were in a hotel, we have like a little tea station or coffee station where parents can go have their drinks, sit down, have a little relax for 10 minutes, and then set themselves up for the day. So I think, yeah, I think it's about teasing it out of the clients, finding out what they love and then, and then how they want to live and blending those together.

Liezel Britz

yeah.

Lucy Goldbart

We always agree on mood imagery before we kind of delve too far into the design. So after that briefing, we'll say, let's take all that information we've gleaned. We'll kind of revert back to you with our own version of that. So taking it another step further maybe in saying, is what we think, our interpretation of your brief with our own spin on it, is that something that works for you?

Liezel Britz

But I understand you also like to source like 20th century pieces. You mentioned earlier about the pieces that you got in Paris and that you liked so much. How do you incorporate that?

Lucy Goldbart

I think that some people are scared by the idea of like a second hand, like antiques or vintage.

And there is such an easy way to blend them into a home that is, you know, if you have a contemporary home, that does not mean that every single piece needs to be new. It's nice to fill a home with characters. So we, I mean, we always do a combination of new pieces,

custom furniture for clients, and then a scattering of some vintage. And I think I do use the word vintage rather than antique, because I think there is a bit of a difference. Like when I think of antique, what comes to mind is like, it's more like antique brown furniture, which is obviously a bit harder to blend in with very contemporary new furniture.

Lucy Goldbart

I think that some people are scared by the idea of like a second hand, like antiques or vintage.

And there is such an easy way to blend them into a home that is, you know, if you have a contemporary home, that does not mean that every single piece needs to be new. It's nice to fill a home with characters. So we, I mean, we always do a combination of new pieces, custom furniture for clients, and then a scattering of some vintage. And I think I do use the word vintage rather than antique, because I think there is a bit of a difference. Like when I think of antique, what comes to mind is like, it's more like antique brown furniture, which is obviously a bit harder to blend in with very contemporary new furniture.

Liezel Britz

Yeah, I can think it makes a project more unique.

Lucy Goldbart

Yeah, absolutely.

Liezel Britz

Tell us a bit more about how collaborating with FCI London has helped bring a vision in the way that you design and the way that you implement your designs? How has it maybe helped you bring your vision to life?

Lucy Goldbart

Yeah, absolutely. So we've worked on a project recently, actually. We're doing the design of a Gimplex penthouse in Chelsea.

Lucy Goldbart

Yeah, absolutely. So we've worked on a project recently, actually. We're doing the design of a Gimplex penthouse in Chelsea.

The clients are art collectors. They love, you know, fab contemporary pieces of furniture. And our vision originally was let's keep the palette a little bit simple and then add bright splashes of colour of interest, sculptural furniture.

So we're thinking maybe some pops of an Eve Klein blue or something interesting, just pieces that spark interest, almost like comfortable, but furniture that doubles up as an artwork. And we were looking for an interesting table as like a centerpiece for the dining room. And we thought maybe we'll find that, you maybe we'll do a, you know, a wooden sculptural table, but it just, wasn't really, there was nothing that was all that kind of.

Liezel Britz

Okay.

Lucy Goldbart

exciting or popping for us. And we had a particular problem that we wanted to do an extendable table, which has its own issues. The client had said to us, could we maybe do a marble? And we thought, well, we love to do marble. But that is not easy to do an extendable marble table from a purely technical perspective. It's a tricky

Lucy Goldbart

exciting or popping for us. And we had a particular problem that we wanted to do an extendable table, which has its own issues. The client had said to us, could we maybe do a marble? And we thought, well, we love to do marble. But that is not easy to do an extendable marble table from a purely technical perspective. It's a tricky

Liezel Britz

Yeah.

Lucy Goldbart

Thing and we came across actually the Drainert dining tables from FCI, which were, well, they're amazing when they actually have a variety of different shapes that were really, really cool. But we've used one that is a really strong green marble tabletop that extends, it's a kind of organic shape top with a sculptural bronze base. And it's just the perfect addition to the room because it's become the feature of the room. And if you walk in, we have this sort of statement monolithic green marble tabletop. And actually we've changed the furniture around it on that basis. We were thinking about doing maybe funky dining chairs and we realised that this is such a feature. We want to keep everything else a bit more calm.

Liezel Britz

Yeah.

Yeah.

Lucy Goldbart

So now we're going to do some kind of simple sort of dark, navy, charcoal dining chairs. We're keeping them very, very neutral feet of the room. It's this amazing piece of marble yeah, FCI have cleverly managed to make a fab extendable dining table

So that's the dining table that we've chosen for the project. it's an amazing green, textured green dining tabletop. And you can see we've kept the rest of the room, the dining table a bit more neutral. And we've actually picked up on the marble, on the green marble from the dining table with our custom rug. So we've taken the pom colors straight from the marble dining tabletop.

It's quite a clever feature and actually went into the FCI showroom because my fear with the extendable table is always that you're going to have some big clunky mechanism that you're going to see. And I didn't really want that to be a feature. Obviously, I think with an extendable table, you want it to be discrete. I like to test everything for our clients in advance. So I went in you just basically just pull you can

can almost see a line there and then a line across here and pull the table and it comes out quite easily. And then push down and it goes back in. So yeah, this is, yeah, the table will be installed in a couple months time, which we're super excited to do. And then we'll share some actual images once it's been installed.

Liezel Britz

FCI is known for their curated luxury bespoke furniture collections. Now, how would you say they arrange in lines with your bespoke client centered approach?

Lucy Goldbart

So I think that the way that worked, the way that the FCI worked really well for us on the latest project was that I'm very particular. Like we have to be for our clients, what our clients pay us for. We're doing a material, whether that is a bronze or a marble, I want to see it in person. I want to, if it's marble, I want to sign off the exact slab, not just, oh, this is a nice jade green marble, but I want to see the actual slab that we're going to be using on the furniture.

Liezel Britz

Yeah.

Lucy Goldbart

Check that I'm happy that it doesn't have any cracks in that sort of thing.

And FCI were actually brilliant with that. So they kind of, totally understood where I was coming from, that, you know, our clients were expecting perfection and we need to double check that. Sso I went into the FCI showroom, And we looked through all the different slab options that were available for the dining table that we had chosen.

And then FCI actually emailed me through actual photos of those slabs later. So we picked the slab and then I said, can I say from a different angle, you know, just to be difficult, of, is that, is that thing on the corner? Is that a crack or what is that? Don’t worry, we'll clean up the slab and we'll send it over to you. And then FCI sent me a photo maybe two days later with the full slab cleaned up. This is what it will look like.

Looked looks beautiful and we signed it off there. But we need that extra attention to detail and I think most of the London showrooms won't do that.

Liezel Britz

Awesome, okay. Well, let's maybe talk a bit about trends and clients and where it's all going. So I know you have worked across many cultures. Have you maybe noticed any universal trends in luxury interiors at the moment? No matter where you go.

Lucy Goldbart

Yeah, I mean, think it is a hard one for us to pinpoint like client trends always because we do work on such a variety of projects that if we just did London, I could say, well, all these clients in London are now asking for this.

I think rather than one specific style, what our clients have been maybe doing the last few years is just getting a little bit bolder or wanting to have like more interesting pieces in their home. We spend so long on our homes that people want to have really interesting spaces. And so I think they're more open to taking risks, which we love. It's always more fun for us to do a really interesting bold design. So I think that's probably the thing I've noticed the most, that people are more open to using a bit more colour and maybe kind of colour washing a whole room, which we love to do as well.

So if we're going to do a green room, we can like to do every surface green - or - that is you know our accent throughout. So we might have a green bedroom. Okay. We have, we did a project recently where we had a gorgeous green velvet headboard, but we also did a, we did the whole bedding was green and then we had green accents in the rug as well.

We pull a trend a bit through them and I wouldn't say only one accent colour through the home. But we find that clients like gravitate towards certain colours. So we may have green in a couple different rooms as the accent. We, I reckon we normally have at least two accent colours in a home. So there may be a couple rooms with green, a couple rooms with like an ochre-y burnt orange.

Uunless it's like, if it's a kid's room, then lots of different kids might like lots of different colours. But otherwise there tends to be some sort of theme running throughout their homes. So whether it's sort of an ode to nature, then there's more, yeah, there is more greeny tones or if it's, they may love sunset hues.

We're going to totally do that.

Liezel Britz

Just in today's clients, if you compare them to clients that you worked with earlier in your career, how would you say are they different?

Lucy Goldbart

I think there's two things. think in terms of like being more adventurous, it's probably not just the clients are more adventurous. I think the older I get, the longer that I do it for, the more confident I am to say, listen, this is an amazing idea.

The only other thing I've, the change I've seen is probably a leaning towards non-toxic materials, but that's been requests that have come from our state side clients. So our clients in Miami, et cetera, they want to make sure that the materials they're using aren't toxic, that the paints they're using are, you know, are kind of VOC free, are you know, they're more conscious of the chemicals that go into their homes. So we use a lot of limewash as a result because it's very breathable and kind of it's very good for you and good for the environment. But then we've always used lots of natural materials anyway.

Liezel Britz

Okay. Is there maybe a particular material or bespoke luxury furniture or even design detail from your global travels that you find yourself using for maybe more than one project now.

Lucy Goldbart

Yeah.

I think the Limewash is actually probably the one at the moment. We absolutely love Limewash. We're using it on so many projects throughout, kind of all over the world. It’s kind of semi-translucent paint. So it's a water-based, like limestone-based paint, which… gives you a very cloudy painterly effect in every room. So it's very soft and kind of enveloping. So we use that on skirtings, walls, corners, ceilings throughout. We actually love to do it on every surface of like a wall and ceiling, because we think that it makes a project look very seamless. And we use that in lieu of normal paints a lot of the time now.

The other one's probably travertine actually that I mean, I travertine has been around for a million years, but it's such a versatile stone that we've got a project in Miami where we're using it in multiple different rooms, but we're using different versions of travertine. So because I think some people think, oh, it's this type of stone. It looks exactly like X. That's not the case. There's, you know, there's with every stone, the reason we pick the slab is because every slab looks different. Every uarry has a different version. So in the kitchen of our Miami project, we're a very like deeply striated, very striking dark travertine. And then in the master bathroom of the same project, we've used a very light, soft, of almost off-white travertine. So even though it's the same stone, it looks completely different.

Liezel Britz

Which also probably gives uniqueness to every home because you don't find exactly the same thing at any other place.

Lucy Goldbart

which was amazing. Yeah.

Liezel Britz

Yeah, that's awesome. So these days, of course, no discussion is complete if we're not touching on the effect that AI has on the workplace. I don't know if you've been involved with AI a bit, but I really like to hear your thoughts. Is it something that you maybe are experimenting with in your design these days

Lucy Goldbart

I'm concerned about it and I think that lots of people think that I'm very old fashioned or like silly for saying this but it actually does concern me from uh I work in a creative industry and I think there are applications where it is incredible. You take the medical field and AI and advanced technology are unbelievable and I completely see the valid reasons for that but in a creative field I worry that it will replace innovative thinking or creativity because it is much easier to think, hold on, let me just, rather than sitting down and thinking, what would look amazing here? Or can I come up with something interesting to say, okay, quick solution. Let me put it in chatGPT, right. Yeah. Let me send that to the client. That works easily done. or even like particularly in things like writing, I think that you can.

fine tune an email so well in a chatGPTor like using AI software. But the more that we do that, the less our brains are being forced to actually process that, like what we're writing or kind of all think about it. And I think that maybe not our generation because we've been used to it, you know, we've had to think for ourselves so long, but I think you have to learn how to do it first and learn like practice using creative thinking and problem solving before you just rely on AI. Otherwise you'll never have those skills in the first place. And there are situations where you can't use AI and you can't use software and you need to be able to do that.

Liezel Britz

Well, I just want to ask a bit about your awards. I am aware that you have received numerous awards for outstanding and diverse designs. Would you maybe explain to us, you know, as normal folk who maybe do not know what the significance are of these awards, would you maybe explain just a little bit for us to understand?

Lucy Goldbart

In short. I think that industry awards or recognition is something that probably as your younger self, you're always kind of gearing up to you or hoping that that will come. I think it's just a nice acknowledgement of the hard work you've put in over time that you're recognised amongst your peers, I think.

Liezel Britz

Yeah.

Lucy Goldbart

It's nice to have validation for the long hours and hard work that you put in. So I think that's really lovely. I actually think what has influenced me more though is probably just client feedback. I think I found that we've kind of, what has progressed, almost kind of progressed my career even more is when a client is really, really happy with their home. And it's that feedback that's probably the most important to me because it's brilliant. It's so, it's such an honor to be kind of getting nominations and awards from bodies like the Society of British and International Interior Designers. But the peoples whose lives you're affecting by doing the design are the clients.

It may sound lame, but I have letters from clients that I've got framed in the office because that to me is the most, it's the nicest thing. like, couldn't possibly want more than someone that walks into their home and says, oh my God, this is more than I can have dreamed of.

And they're living every day at the end of the day. So that's what I'm super, super excited about. Yeah.

Liezel Britz

And they're happy with it, yeah.

Maybe just before we end, let me ask, can you tell us where we can follow your latest work? Is there maybe a social media handle or somewhere we can see what you're working on?

Lucy Goldbart

Yeah, absolutely. The best place to find us is on my Instagram. It's www.lucygolbart.com. Um, but that's the best place to keep up to date with our projects. I put a lot on the stories as well. We kind of really have the live projects on the stories and then the finished ones go on the page as posts. I like to post a lot of behind the scenes.

Liezel Britz

Yeah, it's interesting to learn about the behind the scenes things as well, definitely.

Liezel Britz

Yeah. Okay, well, I'm definitely going to follow that. We'll be looking out on social media. And thank you so much for making time for us, Lucy. I really appreciate it.

Lucy Goldbart

Yeah.

Thank you for having me, really happy to chat to you