From Miele kitchens replete with wine coolers and built-in coffee machines to luxury hotel-standard Hansgrohe shower heads, Residential Land is not one to take shortcuts when it comes to furnishing its rental properties.

This is reflected in their busy interior design team headed up by Tessa Ferguson, who ensures that each property is furnished tastefully and to the highest order and, importantly, requires nothing of the client when he or she moves in. We sat down with Tessa to discover how she approaches furnishing and dressing such a variety of apartments and who she turns to for inspiration.

“The building itself will tell you lots…”

“The building itself will tell you lots. Palace Wharf which we are currently developing in Hammersmith, is an old warehouse built in the 1900s and I want to give a nod to its industrial past in the design and furnishings – without going overboard of course!” she says.

 

The specs at Residential Land range from high to very high. The fact that wine coolers come as standard with most properties is indicative of this. Tessa says, “In our higher spec properties, the joinery is either lacquered or gloss walnut, all the flooring and finishes are extremely high end, the doors are bespoke, the ironmongery will be several notches higher than what you might expect. There’s a whole variety of levels you can go to, however, budgets are always a major consideration.”

Last year Residential Land renovated Garden House in Kensington Gardens Square which Tessa believes was her most challenging project to date.

She says, “We had to renovate a lot of flats in one go and every single one had idiosyncrasies. There were lots of configurations, I think there were 14 different types, so all the furniture needed to be very specifically made and measured for each room.”

“Every single flat has idiosyncrasies…”

When it comes to inspiration, Tessa is an admirer of the contemporary doyens from royal favourite Robert Klime, to the man behind the recherché opulence of Hôtel Costes in Paris, Jacques Garcia. However, Tessa also searches for her muse further afield.

She says, “I look to fashion designers for inspiration quite a lot. Fashion will take me down colour routes which helps me to develop concepts and schemes.”

 

Part of the skill of her job is in creating something that is both inviting and luxurious without being too defining and in consequence divisive.

Tessa says, “I’m developing a style that’s specifically for central London living. It’s contemporary with a classical nod, to suit our market.”

And with this in mind, Tessa is wary of anything that is too ‘on-trend’.

“I’m developing a style specifically for central London living…”

She says, ‘The mid-century Scandinavian look, for example, is very now and I have a feeling it might suddenly fall from grace. There are certain materials, however, that I don’t think will ever go out of fashion. We tend to use chrome and nickel, for light switches and sockets for example. These metals have been in since the 1930s and I don’t think they will ever go out of fashion.”

 

While every flat comes fully furnished right down to bed linen and art on the wall there is, of course, the flexibility to remove or replace anything that’s not to the client’s taste. To Tessa’s credit, though, this is uncommon.

She says “We offer fully furnished apartments to meet consumer demand and happily this is positively received by the majority of our clients as well as aiming to fulfil any special needs and requests on an individual basis.”

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