How This Tiny London Flat Transformed Into a Luxury Space
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Martin Brudnizki believes small spaces deserve big ideas. The founder of one of the world's most celebrated interior design studios, known for Annabel's, Sexy Fish and a string of Rosewood hotels, lives in a London flat that could fit inside one of his restaurant dining rooms. Through multifunctional furniture, clever storage and smart space-maximising solutions, he has made every inch of it feel twice the size.
A compact apartment dressed in sunshine yellow and terracotta, it is a masterclass in embracing constraint rather than fighting it. North-facing rooms made darker on purpose, a curtain where a door might be, a sink moved to a corner to claim back every centimetre. Each decision carries the logic of someone who has spent decades thinking about how spaces make people feel.
Join us as Martin opens the doors to his home and shows why the best rooms aren't the biggest ones.
The benefit of a small space is that you're actually able to do that on more of a budget.
You've not got endless spaces to sort of decorate.
We wanted to fit a lot of equipment into this kitchen so it sort of became almost like an
equation. Sort of create quite a decadent feel and we like to think of it as like a sort of jewel box.
I would say small space you should embrace the darkness.
Hello I'm Martin Brunitsky.
I'm Jonathan Brooke and this is how we live with style.
We wanted this to feel like a hotel room in London. Completely immersive,
completely draped in fabric because that sort of the softness of that is what we like.
One of our big moves was to move the doorway behind me and basically it was on the right
hand side here and the whole idea was to get connection between the window at the front
and the window at the back to get the light flowing through.
As well when you sit on the sofa you will sort of look back to the window and you have the church
and when you lie on the bed you look through this window and you have the garden square.
So because it's such a small space we thought we'd sort of embrace the cosiness really
and sort of quite richly upholster the walls in this kind of moiré silk. Sort of create quite a
decadent feel, quite a small space and we like to think of it as like a sort of jewel box.
But I think as well living in London is a modern city and we are at the moment in 2026 so you sort
of want some modernity into it in terms of the objects, in terms of the art, hence this sort of
mix of this more classical detailing of this room with the cornice, the architraves, the classical
skirting but then you sort of have that very geometric pattern fitted carpet that sort of
gives it a sort of sense of like today. I think it's sort of important that if you have a small
flat that's divided up in a series of spaces pick like one colour story, like one colour theme, it
could be two tones of a colour. It will make the spaces feel bigger. I had this idea in my head
always that yellow is like sunshine in a box so that's sort of where we started and so it became
about yellow and terracotta so the main sitting room is yellow with terracotta piping and then
the kitchen is painted terracotta and has yellow detailing and then the bathroom has yellow tiles
so it's this sort of flip-flopping between yellow and terracotta. In a lot of our work we like the
idea of fantasy and I think a lot of our clients we create a sort of a fantasy world for them
and that's sort of it to a certain extent how we like to live ourselves. I think after a day in
London when you know you've come off the tube we just quite like the idea of escaping into our own
world and I think the benefit of a small space is that you're actually able to do that on a
on more of a budget because you know you've not got endless spaces to sort of decorate.
One day I came here to stay the night and Jonathan was in the country and I walked in and
on the floor appeared two Edwardian mallet decoy ducks that I hadn't seen before and I thought
that was sort of really funny they sort of just appeared out of nowhere. I think Jonathan and I have
very similar taste and have a style that we sort of been together now for sort of 13 years
have sort of developed. Beyond this grand fantastical curtain lies the kitchen. It's just
an off-the-shelf standard kitchen but we customised it so we sort of got this beautiful little
trim detail that we painted yellow. We put this little crown detail on at the top
just to add some sort of little fun fantastical elements and detail to it and we did it as well
you can see here around the door panels below the counter. We bought this trim from a company
called George Jackson that we work with a lot and they do like amazing amazing trims they do
incredible cornicing and all sort of very decorative elements and they've been around
since the time of John Soane. He used them so of course we want to use them too. We wanted to fit a
lot of equipment into this kitchen so it sort of became almost like an equation, dimensional
equation. One of the first decisions that we had to make was do we really need a four burner hob
and the answer of course no because actually we have never used more than two plates
at the same time. The next thing was actually to place the sink in the corner so that we could fit
a dishwasher. Both Jonathan and I hate washing dishes so it is crucial. The main investment for
this kitchen was the marble. The marble top and the full marble splashback will then give you
this sort of sense of a very customised kitchen. As a visual divide between the sitting room and
the kitchen we have this curtain and this is a quite fantastical helmet, slightly gothic sort
of inspired and it was very important to me that when you come into the sitting room and you look
towards the windows this curtain will sort of screen the kitchen and it has sort of a reveal
as you move into the space. Secondly as well if you have friends around for dinner it's just sort
of like lovely to sort of unhook this and pull it. As a contrast to the very light and golden
sitting room we wanted to embrace the darkness with a bedroom and go a bitter dark chocolate.
So we upholstered the walls in this space in this beautiful mohair velvet and it's glorious
especially how it then contrasts with the beautiful gilded picture frames. I would say a
small space which is north facing you should embrace the darkness and you should go darker
and especially if it's a bedroom it sort of creates an incredible coziness that you sort of want.
What we wanted to achieve with the bed in our bedroom was like a dual use. So a bed for night
and a day bed for the day. Hence we covered it in this glorious fabric. When you should come home
at the end of the day from work you can just throw yourself on the bed and not worrying about
the sheets getting filthy. So in both spaces the sitting room as well as this bedroom we used these
two Murano glass chandeliers. This Borsani one and the one in the sitting room which is the Venini
and it would give that sort of level of glamour without being sort of oppressive.
So this is the one proper room in the flat and I think when we sat down we just wanted this to be
like the best sitting room we could find. A really cozy space that we could come to after a day of
work and relax in. Within that we designed it like a sitting room so it's not a room that's doing too
much so we didn't put a dining table in here for example or a desk or other things. We were like
let's just create a really nice sitting room and then within that the pieces can be multifunctional.
Even this sort of tall boy had this little shelf which is quite handy. Sometimes a little secret
we sort of sit here have dinner and then we put like a laptop on here if we watch it like a tv
for our tv dinners. I started life working as an art advisor before stepping more into interiors
and I definitely think I approach artwork not curation from an interior perspective and a big
part of that is the frames. I'm very drawn to a frame and the whole idea of how the frame can
connect the artwork to the interior. There's a whole theory of something called the paragon
where it's like is the frame a piece of the artwork or is it a piece of the interior and I
see it as a bridge between the two really. I think people shouldn't be afraid to like reframe artwork
that they buy and I think it really creates like a nice decorative statement and it can really
elevate the artwork that you're getting. So my top tip would be that if you if you see something
you like don't be afraid to reframe it and there's so many amazing framers you can work with.
This was just a framer I know in Milan who creates these wonderful sort of like
hand carved pieces still just sort of really like elevates and creates something quite special in
the artwork and then when it comes to photography as well you know often you think of like framing
with photography quite a bit more simpler but just we put a little silver chrome sort of
detail trim around the photograph which just sort of makes it stand out a bit more kind of makes it
shimmer a bit which is quite nice. Thank you for joining us today. I hope you have enjoyed our
tour of our humble abode. If you want to see more please go ahead and subscribe to the
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