A pair of former Savills interior designers have teamed up to launch a new business, offering an “investment-led” approach to design and build projects in London.
N + B Design has been founded by Bella Tiarks and Nadine Barkho, who met at Savills nearly a decade ago. Tiarks has since done a spell as a buying agent, but returned to the design world a couple of years ago.
Barkho started out at Savills’ Interior Services department back in 2007, working on design projects across Prime Central London. She left to start a new venture, Nest Designers, in 2013, specialising in the investment side of interiors for large property funds and agents.
Tiarks got started in interiors with a stint at Helen Green Design before moving on to Savills in 2012, where she met Barkho. She left a couple of years later to join Karim Bazzi’s buying agency Homes One, working as a property consultant for three years until she joined Barkho’s Nest in 2016.
The duo’s new South Kensington-based firm seems to have hit the ground running, with a few projects already well underway, including an apartment in Knightsbridge and an amalgamation in Fulham. N + B services range from furniture packs and home-staging through to full refurbishment and extension works.
The Fulham amalgamation is transforming two flats back into a single house, with additional loft, basement and extension works taking the finished residence up to over 1,800 square feet. “The only thing that remained from the previous property was the back and front wall; it underwent a full reconfiguration,” says Tiarks. “This was all done for considerably less than what the other building firms had quoted in tender. We have found that, partially in areas like Fulham, clients have decided to develop their property where they would have moved, in order to avoid stamp duty.”
Bella Tiarks, co-founder of N + B Design: “We have been designing homes in PCL since our Savills days over a decade ago, but launching N + B Design has been a real opportunity to hone our craft. We dedicated a huge amount of time to researching ‘the right design’ and the evolution of London property – it was extremely important to have a dynamic value-add to the industry.
“Our backgrounds constantly put us in position of the very happy medium between design and investment, for both FF&E and building projects; the business itself is split into Style and Build.
“We feel very lucky to have kicked off with a development project in Fulham, and an interior design scheme for an apartment in Knightsbridge.”
Bella Tiarks, co-founder of N + B Design: “We have been designing homes in PCL since our Savills days over a decade ago, but launching N + B Design has been a real opportunity to hone our craft. We dedicated a huge amount of time to researching ‘the right design’ and the evolution of London property – it was extremely important to have a dynamic value-add to the industry.
