The Country Life Top 100 architects, interior designers, craftsmen, builders and garden designers in Britain

It's now six years since the original Country Life Top 100 was published, but the aim hasn't changed: we name the very best architects, interior designers, craftsmen, builders and garden designers in Britain.

Nels Crosthwaite Eyre hall
The hall of a Grade II-listed manor house in Hampshire, transformed by Nels Crosthwaite Eyre of Eyre Interiors, a company which is among the new entries in the 2024 Country Life Top 100. Credit: Simon Brown/Country Life Magazine
(Image credit: Simon Brown/Country Life Magazine)

‘We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us,’ said Sir Winston Churchill in 1943. He was referring to the House of Commons, which had been badly damaged in a bombing two years before. But he could have been referring to any building, large or small, where we choose to make our homes and which do so much to affect us both practically and emotionally.

The reason Country Life launched its Top 100 was to shine a light on the breadth and depth of creativity and expertise available to anyone planning to build or transform a home. What is exciting is not only the arrival of new talent, but also the evolution of established practitioners embracing the possibilities of evolving technology.

Not only do the best architects and designers preserve traditional craft skills, but they also exploit the possibilities of these new ideas. Increasingly, they are responding to the challenges of pressing issues, such as sustainability and the way that lifestyles have changed since the covid pandemic. It is these tectonic shifts that make architecture, gardens and interiors such a fascinating area — and one where Britain leads the world.

How we chose the Country Life Top 100

Our executive editor and interiors guru Giles Kime appeared on the Country Life podcast to explain the months of thought and hard work which go in to compiling the Country Life Top 100. You can listen via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google PodcastsAudible or in the box below.

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A Kent garden designed by Jo Thompson.
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Giles Kime
Giles Kime is Country Life's Executive and Interiors Editor, an expert in interior design with decades of experience since starting his career at The World of Interiors magazine. Giles joined Country Life in 2016, introducing new weekly interiors features, bridging the gap between our coverage of architecture and gardening. He previously launched a design section in The Telegraph and spent over a decade at Homes & Gardens magazine (launched by Country Life's founder Edward Hudson in 1919). A regular host of events at London Craft Week, Focus, Decorex and the V&A, he has interviewed leading design figures, including Kit Kemp, Tricia Guild, Mary Fox Linton, Chester Jones, Barbara Barry and Lord Snowdon. He has written a number of books on interior design, property and wine, the most recent of which is on the legendary interior designer Nina Campbell who last year celebrated her fiftieth year in business. This Autumn sees the publication of his book on the work of the interior designer, Emma Sims-Hilditch. He has also written widely on wine and at 26, was the youngest ever editor of Decanter Magazine. Having spent ten years restoring an Arts & Crafts house on the banks of the Itchen, he and his wife, Kate, are breathing life into a 16th-century cottage near Alresford that has remained untouched for almost half a century.