Italian-marble flooring, a bolection-style fireplace and a 17th-century tapestry hanging on the wall: no, this isn’t the living room of your most stylish friend, it’s the waiting room of aesthetics specialist Dr David Jack.
‘I’ve almost finished an interior design degree, so I did the interiors myself,’ he shares. ‘My Belgravia clinic is in a rather uninspiring 1960s building, so I drew inspiration from Piero Portaluppi, the Milanese architect behind iconic 1930s designs like Villa Necchi, for the interiors. My patients value thoughtful design. I’d like to think the attention to detail in the space mirrors the attention I give to treatments.’
Dr Jack isn’t alone when it comes to using the decor of his waiting room to put his clients at ease. Renowned aesthetics dentist Dr Tom Crawford-Clarke hired interior designer Rebecca Wakefield to transform his postage-stamp-sized space at Luceo Dental into a design haven, blending modern flourishes with antiques that match the 1761 Georgian building. ‘We wanted to shake up the dental category, and give our patients a clinic they would actually enjoy spending time in,’ he says. ‘The cold, sterile-white waiting room was out – we wanted it to feel like a high-end members’ club.’
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Opened in October 2023, Montrose Clinic looks more like an interior designer’s showroom than somewhere to get Botox, with velvet sofas, hand-painted de Gournay wallpapers, marble columns and antique tables. ‘Inspired by traditional London sitting rooms, we asked Actium Design to create something as far from the usual waiting room as possible,’ says MD Alex Samuels.
‘We started with the feature wallpaper and built a bold, complementary colour palette for the soft furnishings. Comfort was an important consideration, so the sofas were made by Dudgeon and the chairs by David Seyfried, while fittings from Collier Webb and Paolo Moschino accentuated the look.’
Unsurprisingly, chic French beauty brand Sisley’s two-storey spa space in the UK, Maison Sisley (pictured top), is a masterclass in the use of colour and print, much like founder Countess Isabelle d’Ornano’s Paris apartment. ‘We wanted it to feel like home,’ says Isabelle’s daughter Christine.
‘Sisley is a family business, and we are personally involved in the development of each maison, filling them with our personal taste and art. The idea is that spas don’t need to feel cold and clinical.’ It’s full of Easter eggs for those who are devoted fans of the brand: a coffee table is modelled on Sisley’s Soir de Lune bottle cap (made by Polish sculptor Bronislaw Krzysztof) while a sculptural chair echoes the brand’s gua sha tool. Even the hand-painted wallpaper is skincare-inspired, taking the appearance of skin cells under a microscope as its focus.
The Omorovicza London Institute, with its cocooning pastel interiors, is similarly striking. The Hungarian brand collaborated with interior designers Edward John Milton and Tina Vaia (who worked on their Budapest Institute) to blend historical influences and modern elegance in the soothing space. Many of the materials and architectural details reference Budapest’s beautiful Rácz Bath and the country’s famed healing springs.
‘Key material choices include the terracotta floor tiles, laid in a herringbone pattern, and wall tiles glazed in colours reminiscent of the 16th-century Ottoman section of the baths,’ says co-founder Stephen de Heinrich de Omorovicza. ‘A sink of burgundy stone is inspired by a 1560s basin, while copper shelves and door frames showcase a key mineral from the thermal waters that are at the heart of all our products.’
Redecorating your living room and stuck for inspiration? The answer is clear: book yourself in for a massage, facial or teeth-whitening session pronto…
