Christian Bense is on the rise thanks to his exquisite attention to detail and warm personality, which is reflected throughout his impressive portfolio of work.
Interior designer Christian Bense founded his eponymous studio five years ago. He is fast becoming renowned for his meticulous work on high-end residential projects and his ability to seamlessly blend old with new whilst injecting each clients’ unique personality.
Born and raised in South Africa, Bense first started out studying Marketing but after a few months switched to Interior Design and has never looked back. In 2015, he relocated to London and, after a stint working for Turner Pocock, set up his own studio.
Alongside his stunningly soulful portfolio of work, Bense’s playful personality and openness on his Instagram page has garnered him deserved attention; and he has been featured on renowned industry lists of ‘Top Interior Designers’.
Here, Bense discusses his creative childhood and design inspirations, as well as his career journey from blogging to running his own studio.
What is your earliest memory of design having an impact on you?
My father was a builder when I was younger, and my mother a photographer, so some of the earliest memories are of me standing on a building site. I also clearly remember spending hours looking through the negatives of my mother’s work. Peering through these slides of editorial photographic work I think trained my eye to see balance, composition etc from a young age. Combine both of my parents’ professions, I don’t think I really had a choice in the matter.
Growing up we were always either moving or building, so whilst I am not one of those designers who will say they got into the industry because they liked to move their room around as a child, the idea of re-making a home every few years definitely imparted something on me.
Where did you study design and what did you specialise in?
Like many leaving high school, I really had no clue what I wanted to do, and I bounced around from wanting to get into medicine, plastic surgery and really anything but enter into the field of art and design. I had excelled in art and history at school, but turning that in a career wasn’t really presented as an option. The first year out of school I started a Bachelor of Commerce in Marketing, at Rhodes University in South Africa, but it only took six months before I decided that this wasn’t for me.
My sister was studying Interior Design at the time in Pretoria, at a college called Inscape Design College, and following in her footsteps felt like an easy transition from one degree to the next.
I studied interior design for three years in Pretoria, graduating Valedictorian after three years with a Bachelors in Design. The degree programme was both incredibly practical and focused a lot on design theory, so combined I feel gave me the hands-on experience to enter the work force, and a wealth of knowledge about design, which served me well later in my career as I started my own studio.
What kind of designer did you aspire to be and who are your inspirations?
When it came to school and studying, I was unfortunately one of those annoying people that did well enough at anything they did, so I hadn’t really thought about what I wanted to be as an interior designer, I just did it because I was good at it, and managed to land a job straight out of college with my portfolio of work. I think it was only once I was actively working in the industry that I realised that I did have a view on what I wanted to achieve and the type of designer I wanted to be. Before I decided to move to the UK from South Africa, I clearly remember flipping through pages in a magazine, with tears in my eyes, because I was so frustrated because I felt I was able to produce better what was in that magazine, but I was stuck in a town and a job that had be repeating the same thing again and again with no real emphasis on creative design, rather just implementation and management.
I knew I needed to be a small fish in a big pond, so I decided to move to London in 2015 and pursue a career here. If I wanted to be the best, I needed to surround myself with the best.
It was only once I arrived in the UK did I start to really develop my aspirations as a designer. Being massively inspired by the likes of Robert Stilin and Beata Heuman, I wanted to be able to create layered and lived in homes where you couldn’t quite pin point where the design started. Effortless design that would last.
What was your first professional design commission?
I had started writing a blog called The Basic Principle about a year before I started my own studio, and my first client (under my own name) contacted me having read the blog and wondered if I would be open to consulting on the house she was building. Slowly but surely the consultation grew into a full design services of multiple rooms, and that project became the soft landing I needed when I left my full-time job. It was an amazing home in Wandsworth, right on the common with the loveliest of clients who gave me the opportunity to figure out who I was as a solo designer, and had the confidence in me to create something really special.
What has been your biggest design commission to date?
I have been so fortunate that the studio has grown from strength to strength over the last five years, and so too have the projects. In the last year or so we have completed the first of our country house projects, which was an 8,500 sq. ft. farmhouse in Somerset, plus another 3,000 sq. ft. of ancillary properties and cottages. In short it’s a contemporary take on a grand country house, with the design narrative inspired by the wild flower meadows in the fields surrounding.
As big as that project was, we have been designing a shell and core penthouse in Mayfair for the last six months, which is also a pretty exciting project. Being able to design a home from a blank slate harks to my days in South Africa where we created homes from empty plots of land and were able to come up with design narratives to create new homes with soul.
How would you describe Christian Bense as a studio and what sets you apart?
To start, what sets us apart? I really do feel that my background gives me a bit of a competitive edge, in that I am not just a creative who has found themselves as an interior designer. All of my clients appreciate design, but they may not necessarily be creative themselves, so we are able to connect and communicate with them on more than just the creative side of the work, which I believe has gone a long way in getting the type of projects we have. We also market ourselves as putting objectivity first. Establishing first what is right for the home above all else, which I know our clients like and what leads to more. Clients know that we are after the right answer, and won’t swing in and furnish a home in our house style and ignore the essence of the people living in it for the sake of us being able to leave an identifiable thumbprint of the studio behind.
Our ideal client is somebody who is building their forever home and wants to work with us to create something that will stand the test of time. Our work is classic and sophisticated, tailored yet warm.
What are the key characteristics you look for when bringing new talent into your studio?
First and foremost, I look for approachability and a strong technical background. Interior design is more than just being able to be creative, it’s about being able to form a relationship and make an idea happen, so these are two key areas that I believe all members of my team have.
Where is the majority of your work based? And how has travel helped to shape and influence your ideas on design?
For the last four years or so, all of our work has been London based. Coming in with no UK experience, I told myself “conquer the capital” before moving further afield. In recent years we have taken on several country house projects in the UK, and have just started work on our first townhouse in Brooklyn NY.
Our aim as a design studio is to take the location of the property into account, and be informed by the setting in which you are in, ensuring that there is an enduring quality to the design and that the home will always remain appropriate and thoughtful. So, whilst travel exposes one to a world of new design styles and ways in which people have overcome obstacles to create beautiful homes, we gently weave in the inspiration of travel, and the design styles picked up along the way, ensuring that they become an accent to the design and not necessarily something that informs it.
What do you think should be a key focus for designers moving forward in 2025 and beyond?
Authenticity. People expect more from interior designers these days, and having a client with a big budget or being able to fill a room with rare collectable pieces of furniture doesn’t necessarily make a good interior designer. Creating a home with soul and authenticity, no matter the style, is the mark of a great designer and this should really be what we focus on.
If you hadn’t become an interior designer what would you be doing?
Although I employ people to do this for me, I think I would become a brand or corporate strategist. Similar to what I do as an interior designer I suppose, I have quite a keen eye for identifying areas of improvement in multiple aspects of a business in order for them to succeeded.
www.christianbense.com | IG: @christian_bense
