It starts at home – how The Grey House Yorkshire can help you to find calm by making your home a sanctuary

by Francesca Lee-Rogers

| 18 Jun, 2025

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Close the door.

You are home.

A place to recharge.

A place to restore.

Your place to find calm.

The Grey House Yorkshire is a little bit different from other interior design businesses; tell me more.

In a busy, complex world The Grey House Yorkshire creates calm spaces, transforming homes into the restorative spaces our minds and bodies need as we deal with the many challenges everyday life throws at us.

More than ever, we need our home to be a sanctuary. Somewhere we can escape to, recharge and restore. Through thoughtful styling and design, we aim to help our clients strengthen the connection between their homes and their wellbeing.

How did you come to set up The Grey House Yorkshire?

I have always been passionate about design. My mother worked in fashion, and my father was an architect, so the influences were there from very early on. I had my own interior design business many years ago, which I ran as a passion project really, alongside my corporate job. Unfortunately, when that got too demanding, I had to put it on the back burner. Over the years, I kept my hand in doing projects for friends and using my own homes to showcase my ideas and capabilities. Some of these I’m happy to say, made their way into the pages of interior magazines. Eventually the pull of a more creative career proved too strong to resist, and two years ago I decided to leave the corporate world and return to the world of interiors. This time with a slightly different focus.

My office years had taken their toll, and when I decided to launch The Grey House Yorkshire, that decision was hugely influenced by my own journey and a gap I could see in the market as a result. People often used to comment on how calm and relaxing my home was. In truth I had designed the house intuitively, simply going with what felt right, so I began to look more closely at what was making them say that.

I realised how much my design decisions had been subliminally influenced by the need for an environment that nurtured and comforted me, that acted as an antidote to the often hugely stressful and demanding jobs both my husband and I had. I spent time unpacking what I had done for myself that had clearly worked so well and that others had experienced too. This resulted in the development of eight guiding principles, which form the foundation of our work.

You're a qualified hygge practitioner; how does this help your clients?

Prior to setting up the business, I did a lot of research into the link between home and wellbeing and, as a result, found myself very drawn to the Danish lifestyle concept 'Hygge' (pronounced 'Hoo Gah'). Its principles can be applied to every aspect of your life – relationships, parenting, work and even Christmas – but the home is most definitely key – and those principles dovetail so well with our own, whilst also bringing an extra dimension to what we do as a business. I decided to take my interest a step further and become qualified in Hygge training at the Danish School of Excellence. This was mainly as a way to reinforce its importance and to give our clients additional confidence in our capabilities.

For the sceptics out there, who think Hygge is all a bit fluffy and lacking in substance, I can reassure them that Hygge is underpinned by some tangible physiological benefits, for example, the production of serotonin, and a fair bit of applied psychology. In some ways, Hygge has a close connection to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (a conceptualisation of the needs that motivate human behaviour based on physiological, safety, love, esteem and self-actualisation), in as much as safety and security are core elements.

Hygge is all about comfort, cosiness, warmth, love, positivity and gratitude. In relation to your home, it's the joy you get from everything you touch, see, feel and enjoy when you (and others) inhabit your space.

How can the right environment positively affect our wellbeing?

The link between home and wellbeing is hardwired into Danish DNA. In the UK, we still have some catching up to do, and I know I have quite a big job to do to help people understand that our homes can make a bigger contribution to our wellbeing than they often do. Once we have acknowledged we need a reset (if indeed we do acknowledge we need a reset), there are usually several areas we traditionally look to change – improving our diet, doing more exercise, investing in relationships and tackling our work/life balance.

One crucial aspect of our lives that often gets overlooked, however, is our home. Perhaps this is because we think changes will be too costly or too much of an upheaval. But that isn’t necessarily the case. Even small changes can have a big impact.

I experienced for myself the difference that certain design and styling decisions, big and small, made to my surroundings and the hugely positive and calming influence they had as an antidote to a busy, challenging life. Now, supported by our eight guiding principles developed from my years of experience, I want to support and inspire others to find calm in their homes.

How can people work with The Grey House Yorkshire?

There are a number of ways that clients can work with us. Our aim is to give people options for how they can access our services so that we're able to meet as many different needs as possible. Our services can also be bought separately, so you don't need to commit to a big transformation project to be able to benefit from our knowledge and expertise.

Services range from advice and ideas (helping to define ideas, research options and visualise designs), to sourcing specific items (saving people time and effort in getting absolutely the right thing), to helping people to style their homes (often using pieces they already have).

Obviously, we work on bigger end-to-end projects which include design, implementation and project management, but at the other end of the spectrum we also provide skills development workshops (sharing tips, tricks and techniques so people can more confidently undertake home improvement projects themselves).