Why British designers dream up the most desirable hotels

Sam Godsal collaborated with Lulu Lytle of Soane Britain to bring the interiors of Cobblers Cove on the west coast of Barbados to life.

(Image credit: Cobblers Cove)

By Giles Kime

published 14 April 2025

in Features

For the first time, Country Life's most recent list of Britain’s top interior designers, garden designers and architects included two new arrivals who had made their names in hotels: Kit Kemp of Firmdale Hotels and James Thurstan Waterworth, who cut his teeth at Soho House. Much of the success of Kemp’s hotels (eight in London, three in New York in the US) is that their interiors elevate you into a parallel universe of pattern, colour and distinctive design the moment you cross the threshold. When it launched in 1995, the appeal of Soho House was that it made you feel as if you had been invited to the home of someone far, far cooler than you.

Thurstan Zetter Bloomsbury — James Thurstan Waterworth is behind the interiors at The Zetter Bloomsbury which opens later this year, behind the British Museum.

Britain has good form when it comes to turning out hotel designers. Michael Inchbald knew exactly how to prick the pomposity of Classicism and warm up the cool hand of Modernism, whether working his magic at Claridge’s, The Savoy, The Berkeley or his pièce de résistance, the First Class Saloon of the QE2. Soon afterwards, Anouska Hempel — a New Zealander by birth who arrived in Britain in 1962 — not only invented the concept of the boutique hotel, but also imbued Blakes in South Kensington, London SW7, with a heady eclecticism that has had a transformative influence on generations of designers.

Warren St Hotel bedroom — Kit Kemp's signature colour and pattern helped bring the Warren Street Hotel in New York's Tribeca hotel to life.

Kemp is not the only British designer to work her magic overseas. Sam Godsal, whose late father-in-law founded Cobblers Cove in Barbados in the 1960s, has spent the past decade gently coaxing the hotel into the 21st century. She worked with Lulu Lytle of Soane Britain to dream up an unlikely, but delicious cocktail of English elegance and tropical exuberance, large-scale florals and paintings by Caribbean artists, including the Trinidadian polymath Boscoe Holder. Existing furniture has been given a nip and a tuck, local artisans commissioned and a jaunty pink-and-white stripe creates a festive feel by the pool.

The burning question is why British designers have a unique ability to cast a spell over a hotel. The answer would seem to lie in their understanding that luxury and distinctive, uplifting and sometimes quirky style needn’t be mutually exclusive.

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.

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