April 7, 2024London-based interior designer Bryan O’Sullivan doesn’t like to repeat himself. “I try to approach every project with fresh eyes and not cut and paste,” he says. “Each time, I like to push the boundary.”
The first monograph devoted to his work — Bryan O’Sullivan: A New Glamour (Rizzoli) — perfectly illustrates his aesthetic range. Among the 15 projects featured is his 2023 overhaul of Claridge’s restaurant in London’s Mayfair, which displays strong Art Deco influences. An apartment on New York’s Fifth Avenue has a clean, architectural look, while his own flat in the brutalist-style Barbican complex in London radiates a more relaxed, colorful vibe, with a bright red chest of drawers in the living room and walls covered almost entirely by artworks hung in a loose, syncopated fashion.
It was exactly that diversity of styles that attracted the owners of another project in the book: a townhouse in London’s Notting Hill district. “Bryan seemed very versatile. His interiors are all beautiful in different ways,” says the wife, who relocated to the British capital from the United States with her husband and two young children.
In the book, penned by O’Sullivan in tandem with journalist Sam Cochran, the house is evocatively described as “an eight-level icing cake of a home.” O’Sullivan’s clients acquired it after a complete renovation by a property developer. “It was done quite well,” recalls O’Sullivan, “and it didn’t make sense to tear everything out and start again.” So, very few structural modifications were made.
Nevertheless, the former decor, which he describes as largely “gray” and “sterile,” left a lot to be desired. The brief from his clients was for something “warm, welcoming and fun,” and O’Sullivan responded by giving them a house that is not only beautiful and balanced but also exudes personality and pizzazz. The front parlor is coated in glossy paint, with teal walls and bookcases and a peach-toned ceiling, while the adjacent dining room sports a custom blue-and-white botanical mural created by decorative painter Sam Wood.
One constant throughout the house are the extremely simple curtains, which hang straight as an arrow — a stylistic approach he picked up from the New York–based architect Annabelle Selldorf, with whom he trained early in his career. “Annabelle has always had this very minimal way of doing curtains,” he says. “I’m obsessed with her. She’s ingrained in my mind.” In the foreword to his book, she in turn lauds his ability to create “total environments that are transporting.”
O’Sullivan’s journey through life started in Ireland, where his father was a teacher and soccer coach and his parents owned a café and delicatessen in Kenmare, County Kerry. He attributes his love of architecture and design to his maternal grandfather, who was a builder. “He spent a lot of time drawing in his studio, which was filled with remnants of old statues and sections of stained glass that had been salvaged while restoring old churches,” O’Sullivan writes in the book. “He would teach me about floor plans and elevations.”
O’Sullivan studied at the universities of Greenwich and Westminster, both in London, and interned in Selldorf’s New York offices during a gap year between the two. In one of many nice anecdotes in the book, he recalls his parents taking him for dinner at Claridge’s to celebrate his graduation. “I . . . was blown away by the all-out glamour,” he writes. “How could I have imagined that eighteen years later the hotel would approach me to redesign that very room?”
He gained ample early experience in the hospitality sector by working for both David Collins and Martin Brudnizki, and also did a stint in the Paris office of Luis Laplace before setting up his own studio, in 2013. His first clients came by way of his now husband and business partner, James O’Neill, who introduced him to a couple who had bought a house on Ibiza. His most high-profile London projects have included The Berkeley Bar & Terrace, as well as the Red Room and cigar speakeasy at The Connaught. He also runs a gallery in Mayfair for his own furniture and lighting collection and oversees a staff of more than 70, divided between London and New York, whose current projects include a new hotel concept in Hawaii, a large property on Further Lane in East Hampton and the complete renovation of the Shore Club in Miami (due for completion in 2027).
Despite his flexibility, O’Sullivan’s interiors have a number of common denominators, very much in evidence in the Notting Hill home. He regularly commissions site-specific elements from artisans, like the stained-glass panel in the house’s vestibule door created by the Northern Irish firm CWS Design and the marmorino plaster on the sitting room walls, produced by stucco specialist Paul Marlow. “It’s more subtle than Venetian plaster and gives a gorgeous texture to rooms,” O’Sullivan says. He also loves using high-gloss finishes and favors printed fabrics for dining chairs. “They help to hide food stains,” he explains.
Among the Notting Hill house’s existing architectural elements that he inherited was black-and-white terrazzo in the primary bathroom. “It’s not something we would have done ourselves originally, but we ended up liking it,” he says. The bathroom’s main drawback was actually more practical than aesthetic — it had zero storage space. “We had to invent something, and there was really nowhere to put it.” He ended up creating a bespoke ceramic cabinet with a bright-red interior and hanging it from the ceiling. “It almost looks like a suspended beehive,” he quips.
He also kept the minimalistic oak paneling in the husband’s study, furnishing the space with an astute combination of pieces such as a Pierre Yovanovitch coffee table and a Rose Uniacke sofa. Elsewhere, O’Sullivan deployed items of diverse provenance (a French giltwood mirror in the sitting room, a Max Ingrand table lamp purchased from Massimo Caiafa via 1stDibs in the dining room), but he put a particular emphasis on Nordic design, because of the wife’s Scandinavian origins. Such pieces include the Carl Westman pendant light in the primary bedroom, the barrel-shaped armchairs by Swedish designer Mats Theselius in the front parlor and the vintage Swedish rug in the dining room.
The last provided the starting point for the Sam Wood mural, on top of which the clients suggested hanging a group of more classical paintings they already owned. “We played around arranging them asymmetrically, which gives them a more contemporary feel,” says O’Sullivan, who likes to bring a spirit of collaboration spirit to his projects — an approach that certainly appealed to these homeowners. “Bryan’s incredibly easy to work with,” says the wife. “He’s always willing to listen to your ideas as well as sharing his own.”
