Client Spotlight: Lost and Found Interiors
By Marketing Bert & May
Oct 30, 2023
We caught up with interior designer Lou Thomas of Lost and Found Interiors ...
What inspired you to become an interior designer?
Simply a love of art and design. From escaping to the art room at school, to learning to weld and turn wood in the workshops at Uni… drawing, painting, creating, and making is what I grew up doing. Work life started in the Welsh Valleys, designing furniture, followed by a decade in retail, developing and project managing new store concepts. In 2009, my husband and I set up Lost and Found Architects and a few years later Lost and Found Interiors was founded - a design studio specialising in residential interiors. (Although it was a fun designing our local curry house interior recently).
Share a design trend you're currently obsessed with.
Colour and pattern and the play between the two.
How do you stay inspired and keep up with the latest design trends?
Being ‘out and about’ is what inspires me the most. There is always somewhere to go and something to see... an exhibition, a historic building, a shop, a showroom, an open garden, antiques fair, or early morning car-boot. There are colours and patterns, art and architecture, designs & details everywhere. I once designed a bedroom scheme around colours spotted on hand cream packaging. I find inspiration from all sorts of things ranging from industry shows, trade fairs and design weeks. And then sometimes, a coffee and an editorial, or dog-walk and a podcast is a great way to catch up on trends (and fresh air) This week’s listen is Modern House ‘Homing In’
What's your favourite design trend of all time, and why?
For us, the best-loved trends are those that 'maximise the potential of the existing' rather than starting completely afresh. Inherently sustainable in approach and always looking to retain, refresh and restore what is there, whilst throwing as little away as possible. Of course, sometimes things are beyond repair but more and more often we are designing interiors around cherished heirlooms, art collections and even cookers and fridges with years of good life still left! For us, this adds character and allows us to create timeless spaces that tell a story but with a new lease of life whilst also saving money.
Additionally, we're curious about your experiences with our B&M tiles:
We have incorporated many Bert & May tiles into our projects over the years. It’s the handmade beauty, the textures, colours and designs that our clients fall for. And the added option of having bespoke tiles made, opens-up really, exciting new opportunities: a special order of the Formentera tile was placed for a recently completed bathroom. It’s vibrant motif, influenced by the Spanish landscape and islands, is now in situ and looks wonderful. The floor tiles are also the perfect temperature, cool in summer but with under floor heating warming things up, during the colder months.
What's your favourite project where you've incorporated B&M tiles?
Our favourite Bert & May project has to be ‘Round Hill House’s family bathroom… Covered in floor to ceiling brown tiles and ageing sanitaryware, this bathroom needed a ‘fresh’ new look with new fittings and much more storage. For continuity and flow we wrapped Bert and May’s ‘Forest Herringbone’ tiles around the room at low level. It was important, to us, not to interrupt this line in any way and so we added a two-tone tiled wall into the shower. The Brighton Stone tile mirroring the wall colour. To balance the vertical grid layout, we laid the Formentera pattern on the floor. We love the combination, the colours. The green and white gold fittings are a match made in heaven. And you can never have enough plants – I think our favourite shot is when we gave them a soak in the bath.
That said our ‘Soho House Berlin Kitchen’ comes a very close second.
What's your favourite way to add personality to a space?
Lost and Found’s ethos is about discovering spaces that are lost, details that are missing and delight in mixing the old with the new. We’re at our happiest when breathing fresh life into a forgotten, under-utilised room, reviving a tired-old treasure, or restoring a market find and creating interiors that are ‘just so.’ For us, great design is about a million little things coming together to turn a space, an interior, into something extra special and bursting with personality.
Share a design hack or tip that everyone should know.
An obvious one but never fully deck out a room in one go. Let an interior sit for a bit, if there’s an empty shelf or wall, that’s a good thing as the perfect accessory or artwork will be just around the corner, waiting to be found!
Follow on instagram: @lostandfoundinteriors
Photography: Astrid Templier