Studio Ashby | Guernsey, Channel Islands

Guernsey Family Home: Conscious Select × Studio Ashby

Studio Ashby was founded in London in 2014 by Sophie Ashby, who studied History of Art at Leeds before training in interior design at Parsons in New York, and opened her own practice at twenty-five. The studio is now led by Sophie alongside Partners Fiona Blanchot and Nicola Koller, whose backgrounds in architecture, retail, and design education shape a practice built on layered, art-forward interiors rather than a single house style. The portfolio spans a listed Edwardian home on Hyde Park, a Georgian villa in Holland Park, a brownstone in New York, and boutique hotels across South Africa, Mallorca, and London. In 2026, the studio opened a second office in Cape Town, deepening a connection to South Africa that already runs through much of its work.

‍The Guernsey Family Home is where that connection surfaces most personally.

The Project ‍

The project is a full refurbishment and extension of a family home on Guernsey, undertaken for clients with deep ties to Africa. Studio Ashby led the interior end to end, working art and craft into the structure of the home rather than treating them as finish.

The brief was calm, light, and landscape, and it runs through every room. A commissioned ceiling mural anchors the home. Wardrobe panels embroidered with a landscape the clients photographed themselves carry a far more private reference. Furniture throughout draws on the textures and craft of the African continent, chosen for the family's history rather than for trend.

The result reads less like a design statement than a record of the people who live there: inviting, unpretentious, and always in conversation with the world outside.‍ ‍

Photography by Kensington Leverne. Styling by Anna Sheridan.

CS Design Values‍ ‍

Adaptive Reuse. Working within or restoring existing structure rather than building new.

Sourced with Intention. Reclaimed, vintage, locally sourced, or artisan-made pieces are central to the project.‍ ‍

Working with Nature. Landscape, light, and site are integrated rather than overridden.

Why It's Consciously Selected

Personal briefs like this one carry a real risk: family meaning can tip into clutter, or into references only the family understands. Guernsey Family Home avoids both. The mural, the embroidered panels, the furniture sourced for its ties to a specific place, all read as considered rather than sentimental. Nothing is decoration for its own sake. It is a home built around meaning rather than trend, and it holds together because every choice can be traced back to the people who live in it.