There is a particular feeling that comes with being offered something that is slightly bigger than what you have done before. It isn’t quite fear and I don’t think it is anxiety either. It is more like a collection of question marks.

Am I ready for this?

Can I really do this at this level? Can my little studio deliver what a client with very high expectations will expect? What happens when the brief is bigger, the budget is bigger, the expectations are bigger and there is simply more at stake?

Guess what doesn’t make it into the beautiful photographs or get felt during the reveal?

The part where the wrong fabric arrives. The part where a shipment is delayed, the truck breaks down or is impounded (happened just last week), an artisan is running late (or not coming at all), and somehow three things that were supposed to happen on Tuesday now need to happen on Thursday. And then there is the phone call: “Anne, what do we do?”

I love Instagram for its immediacy and endless stream of inspiration, but there is something very different about sitting down with a beautifully printed magazine, turning the pages slowly and allowing yourself to really look.

All of these have an online platform as well and equally great IG accounts to feast over, but ultimately, these five design magazines should be consumed once in a while in printed version - to inspire, challenge the eye and, occasionally, make you want to redecorate your entire house.

I love a seasonal change. I do miss the four distinct seasons in Germany a lot, but in Nigeria, the seasons change more dramatically: from dry to rain season. And with it the strong urge and deeply satisfying exercise of giving your space a reset too.

Is this the time for a shopping spree? Not really, at least not for me. What interests me more is to see my sanctuary differently, despite not purchasing anything new.

We tend to think that refreshing a space means shopping: a new cushion or a vase, or another decorative object. This can and will happen eventually, but we can achieve effective transformations without buying a single thing.

How did I achieve this over the last weekend?

Money is probably the least glamorous part of designing a home. Yet it’s the conversation that determines almost every decision that follows.

Curiously, it’s also the conversation many people avoid. Clients arrive with hundreds of Pinterest images, mood boards filled with Italian furniture, handcrafted lighting and natural stone kitchens. Then comes the inevitable question: “Can we achieve this on a much smaller budget?” Sometimes, yes. Often, no. And pretending otherwise serves no one.

Summer came early this year in Europe and it came hottttt. Most homes in Germany or other parts of Northern or Central Europe are not equipped with air conditioners as default and struggle to respond to the massive heat waves that are occurring more frequently due to global warming.

In Nigeria, however, 40 degrees, when in season, is not an exception. 34 degrees are totally normal. ACs, when affordable and in the city where connected to the national grid (sadly these conditions must be met first), are now a standard fixture in every room.

But there was a time when comfort wasn't powered by electricity.

Walk into many newly built luxury homes today and are likely be greeted by the same visual language: a double-height entrance, grand staircase, endless marble, gold accents, then an oversized chandelier. Imported furniture only. And every surface polished to perfection.

At first glance, it's impressive. Like a perfectly scripted backdrop out of a catalogue.

But then, you have to look a little longer and imagine the life of those who are privileged to call it their own and wake up every morning. Where does the morning light fall? Can fresh air move naturally through the home? Does every room serve the people who live there, or only the guests who visit? Is the scale comfortable? Do the materials improve with age? Is there warmth, or even personality?

Taste is often described as something you either have or you don’t, like a natural instinct or a personal preference that you can’t argue or almost impossible to explain. But after years of working with spaces, materials, people and projects, I believe taste is much more complex than that.

I believe that taste can be refined and developed. And it can be trained. Not in the sense that someone can hand you a formula for what is beautiful, but in the sense that your ability to recognise balance, intention and quality grows through exposure and curiosity. The reason is taste is rarely created in isolation.

A home rarely changes all at once. Changes don’t come sudden, but are constant as the home quietly evolves around the people living in it. A new baby completes the family or a toddler becomes a teenager. Your work dynamics change and working from home becomes the norm. Routines start to shift and suddenly the rooms that once felt perfectly suited begin asking for a different kind of attention. The walls may remain the same, but life inside them has moved forward.

This is what makes designing for growing families such a meaningful part of interior design.

Scale is one of the quietest forces and principles in interior design. It determines whether a room feels balanced, intentional and effortless, or whether something feels slightly “off” without people being able to explain why.

A room can have beautiful materials and expensive pieces, yet still feel underwhelming when the proportions are not right.

Large spaces require a different design approach than small rooms. This became especially clear in our Guzape Hills project, where the scale of the architecture naturally demands a stronger response.

Not every home office problem requires a renovation. In fact, some of the most effective workspace upgrades have very little to do with the desk itself. More often, they involve improving the way your designated office space functions and supports your daily routines. After all, productivity is rarely about working harder. You will increase your productivity if you find the right ways for you to reduce friction and distractions.

Here are a few changes we regularly recommend before considering a full redesign.

There was a time when home was defined by permanence. It was a fixed address with familiar routines. Somehow, the repetition brought comfort to our lives as steadiness and stability were responsible for the tempo in which we lived.

In today’s fast-paced global village, for many people, especially in urban areas, life looks very different. Home exists between boarding gates and project deadlines, between Abuja and London. Late nights at work and early flights out are common realities to working professionals. Some people spend more time in hotels than in their living rooms and return home only long enough to repack a suitcase before leaving again.

And yet, the desire for home remains deeply human.

There is a growing conversation within contemporary African interiors around what luxury should look like locally. Should we source entirely from abroad to achieve refinement? Or should we rely solely on local craftsmanship as an act of cultural preservation and economic support?

At AD Design, we believe the answer lies in the balance between the two.

There is something strangely confronting about writing the number down.

Forty.

Not because I feel old, I actually don’t (and friends would attest that 04 sometimes seems more adequate), but because time suddenly becomes tangible. The math starts to tell stories your mind hasn’t quite caught up with yet.

Why good small-space design is less about size and more about strategy.

Small spaces reveal very quickly whether a design decision was intentional or not. There is less room to hide behind excess. Less room for unnecessary furniture, decorative gestures, or layouts that don’t fully work. Every element becomes more visible because every square meter matters more. For this reason designing compact spaces often requires more discipline than larger ones.

On the kind of work that stretches you and why this matters.

No project is alike. Some move smoothly. Others don’t and stretch you in unexpected ways, and even shift how you think entirely about design.

Our commercial project TMO Boutique was one of those projects. The design brief was clear but it came with a different set of demands. Sustainability wasn’t a concept we could interpret loosely; rather, it was the main constraint. Materials had to be reconsidered and design processes were questioned by ourselves throughout the concept development and execution.

There are questions that feel timeless in design, and then there are questions that refuse to stay theoretical. When I was invited by Ahmed Bello and Jamil from Treuhandesign to join a roundtable discussion on whether architecture is art or science, it quickly became clear to me that this was not about labels. While the debate was heating up, I was drifting into my understanding of interior design and the sense of responsibility attached to it.

To discern whether architecture, or in my case, interior design can be considered first art before science art or vice versa, sits another, more urgent question that also every architect should answer for themself: what makes a space truly sustainable?

There is a version of interior design that exists online that is clean and beautifully finished.

And then there is the version that happens on site. Somewhere between drawings and delivery, intention and execution, there is a layer most people and even clients don’t see. I am talking about the moment where ideas meet reality. And in our context, it is where we work most closely with local suppliers and artisans.

This is not a complaint. It’s the work. But it is, in all sincerity, also where many of the real challenges sit and where more honest conversations need to happen more often and openly.

Designing for one person is already an exercise in translation: understanding habits, preferences, what someone says they like versus how they actually live. Designing for two is something else entirely. Because it’s rarely about “his style” and “her style.”And it’s definitely not about merging two aesthetics into one polite compromise.

Designing for a couple means holding two different routines, two different ways of moving through a day, two different definitions of comfort - all within one space, without either person feeling like they have to adjust too much. And that’s the real brief.

Pretty everyone knows this when walking through the supermarket aisle. You just wanted cookies but the options in front of you makes you wonder whether you rather want the latest chocolate bar, a plant-based protein alternative or whether you should rather pick a sack of oranges instead. The seemingly endless options can feel weighty and don’t necessary help with hesistant decision-making. But this is about sweet treats only.

What if there is millions involved and the output is far more lasting than an extra kilogram around the hips?