Meet Our Next in Design Winners: Arall

A diptych, featuring Ananth Ramaswamy sitting amongst the antique furniture and intricate wallpaper of a red room on the left, and a long shot of a rustic kitchen with a large, statement chandelier on the right. — (Image credit: Sim Canetty-Clarke/Brotherton-Lock)

Our Next in Design 2025 winner, Ananth Ramaswamy, hadn’t planned to become an interior designer, but after moving to the U.K. from Bangalore, the profession found him. ‘I thought I wanted to be an architect and went through the full grind of seven years of study, but it was interiors that I discovered I had a passion for,’ Ananth says.

His first job was at the architecture firm Michaelis Boyd, working on the design of apartments at Battersea Power Station, as well as décor projects for Doyle Collection hotels. That led to him founding Arall in 2022, where he took on private residential properties.

A warm and elegant Georgian living room, featuring a patterned ottoman as a coffee table, two comfy-looking couches and some bold, abstract artwork on the wall

‘I have a rigor from my architecture training that puts me in good stead for interiors,’ Ananth says, and it’s this attention to detail that helped him manage a recent project where the clients insisted on 100% natural, no-VOC materials. ‘Even down to checking the glue used on wallpapers!’ he says.

He has just completed a project in Wanstead and now wants to help make the design industry more inclusive. ‘Coming to a new country, I didn’t have a network to help me get my first job, and it was hard,’ he says. ‘So often I’ve been the only brown person at the table, but I’ve now got the confidence to fight for my place and to shine a light on the beauty of Indian craftsmanship.’

3 Key Design Lessons with Arall

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1. Mixing Old and New
This is something I really enjoy doing in my projects – mixing found pieces with newer ones that the client might like or that I might find. That balance of old and new brings character. It creates a lived-in feel that I strive for in every project I do.

2. The Art of Proportion
I think proportion is a subtle art. There are lots of ways to achieve balance in a room. I usually start with the bones of the room – the baseboards, the size of the cornice, the thickness of the shelves, the scale of the architrave, and finally the scale of the pieces that furnish the room. These are all areas where, if you pay attention to proportion, you can create a strong sense of balance, permanence, weight, and integrity – qualities that are really important and often forgotten.

3. Don’t Think Too Much
Life keeps changing – you keep changing, and your choices keep changing. So I think your home has to evolve and have enough flexibility to accommodate your changing lifestyle. If you don’t overthink things, you’ll probably make decisions that are more organic and intuitive. Working with that intuition is really important. I think everyone has it – you just need to find it and tap into it.

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Pip Rich is an interiors journalist and editor with 20 years' experience, having written for all of the UK's biggest titles. Most recently, he was the Global Editor in Chief of our sister brand, Livingetc, where he now continues in a consulting role as Executive Editor. Before that, he was acting editor of Homes & Gardens, and has held staff positions at Sunday Times Style, ELLE Decoration, Red and Grazia. He has written three books – his most recent, A New Leaf, looked at the homes of architects who had decorated with house plants. Over his career, he has interviewed pretty much every interior designer working today, soaking up their knowledge and wisdom so as to become an expert himself.