27 Years of Taylor Howes

At Taylor Howes we believe that our provenance is our future. The 9th of June, 1993 marks the day that Taylor Howes Designes was founded. Today we celebrate 27 years of being part of British interior design. Over the past 27 years, our interior design studio has redefined a new benchmark for remarkable interiors and exquisite furnishings. This is our story…

Karen Howes passion for interior design started when she was a child when she was always rearranging her room. Yet her real love affair with interiors began when she was 18 years old when she rented a room in a tiny house in King’s Cross owned by Martin Waller, worldwide furniture retailer and founder of Andrew Martin. This was a real treasure trove, full of unusual artefacts which shaped her eye for design and love of interiors.

At the age of 19 Karen bought her first flat and set about decorating it herself – from sanding the floors to making the curtains. Her friends who all worked within the prime property sector in London loved the work she was doing and asked if she would design flats that they were developing to sell.  From this Karen founded her own interior design practice from her spare room in Pimlico. Working four days a week as an estate agent, she spent the other three days building up a client base that would allow her to achieve her dream of becoming a leading interior designer in London.

By the age of 21, Howes had launched her first interior design business and was steadily climbing the property ladder. Howes met her future business partner Gail Taylor when they started working on an important show apartment for a leading house-builder, which in turn led to fifty more commissions of this kind. This collaboration led to the birth of Taylor Howes in 1993, which was launched from an office located in the London home of fashion guru, Isabella Blow – Taylor Howes was in the front room and Phillip Treacey having just graduated from St Martins in the back. Having outgrown the space the team then moved to Chelsea Harbour.

In 2011, Karen took sole charge of the company and had a vision of elevating the Taylor Howes brand to a super brand status and in 2016 she moved the office headquarters to the heart of Knightsbridge at Cheval Place in the former Aston Martin showroom. This cemented Taylor Howes reputation as one of Britain’s greatest interior design studios with a global reputation for creating elegant and dynamic spaces across Europe, the Middle East and the USA, with a diverse portfolio spanning private clients, property developers and hoteliers.

Taylor Howes under Karen’s direction has been decorated by more than 15 award bodies and in 2006 won the Andrew Martin Interior Designer of the Year Award and is consistently featured in the highly coveted annual awards book. In 2018 Taylor Howes became a member of Walpole, recognising the studio’s status as a Great British design house.  Karen’ positive, approachable and refreshing energy is the beating heart of the brand company which compromises of a team of 25 members making Taylor Howes  one of the largest independently owned interior design studio in the United Kingdom.