Who Is the Best Luxury Interior Designer? How to Choose

“Best” is not a style. It is the rare alignment of taste, experience, technical judgment, discretion, and the ability to make a client feel that the finished home could belong to no one else.

The question “Who is the best luxury interior designer?” is understandable, and it is also too broad to be answered honestly with one name. Luxury design is not a sport with a single scorecard. A historic London townhouse, a contemporary Beverly Hills estate, a Riyadh compound, a yacht, and a longevity-focused residence ask different things of the designer. The better question is: who is best equipped to create the particular life you want this property to hold? Once that question is asked, the criteria become clearer—and much more useful than a ranking.

There are several internationally recognized designers whose work deserves attention. Some are exceptional at classical architecture, some at collectible design, some at hospitality, some at restrained contemporary residences, and some at the complex privacy and operational demands of UHNW households. The client’s responsibility is not to find a celebrity designer. It is to find a designer with a proven point of view and a process equal to the property. The following criteria are the ones I would use if I were hiring someone for my own home.

Portfolio caliber: look for a complete world, not a viral room

A top-tier portfolio shows more than beautiful objects. It reveals how a designer handles sequence, proportion, daylight, comfort, circulation, material transitions, storage, sound, and the relationship between rooms. Look for complete projects and look for variety within a recognizable sensibility. The best designers do not repeat the same house for every client; they repeat standards of thoughtfulness. A home should reflect the people who live there, not simply announce the person who designed it.

Ask whether the portfolio is commensurate with your project’s complexity. A firm may have genuine taste and still not be suited to a full architectural renovation, a staffed estate, an international commission, or a home requiring complex wellness or technology systems. At the highest level, the design must hold together when the close-up photograph ends and daily life begins. That is why the plan, the elevations, the details, and the site process matter as much as the finished image.

Longevity and track record: time teaches the things a mood board cannot

Experience is not a guarantee of quality, but it teaches a designer where expensive mistakes hide. Over time, one learns which materials age well, which vendors can deliver, what happens when construction meets an old building, how clients feel about a decision five years later, and which details make a home easy to live in. A long career also creates relationships with makers, installers, architects, and specialists that cannot be assembled overnight. Ask not only how long a designer has been active, but how they have sustained the work across changing tastes and different places.

I have spent thirty-one years designing homes, hotels, yachts, private aircraft, and private residences across four continents. That longevity has made me less interested in visual novelty for its own sake and more interested in rooms that remain persuasive after a family has lived in them. It is the quieter test. A house should gain character with use, not require replacement because it was designed around a season’s fashion.

Specialization fit: the best designer must understand your actual brief

A designer can be outstanding and still be wrong for a particular project. If you are restoring a historic property, you may need someone with a deep understanding of architectural lineage and conservation. If your household entertains on a large scale, you need someone who understands arrival, service, back-of-house circulation, and the emotional logic of hospitality. If the home is in the Gulf, privacy, family gathering, cultural patterns, and climate should inform the plan before decoration. If your project crosses borders, procurement and logistics are part of the creative brief.

This is why I resist one-size-fits-all definitions of luxury. The right home can be quiet or glamorous, classical or contemporary, highly formal or deeply relaxed. What makes it ultra-luxury is not a prescribed palette. It is the integration of architecture, materials, craft, function, and personal meaning at a level where stock answers are not enough.

Global reach: useful when it is operational, not promotional

A global practice has value when it gives the client access to the right expertise, makers, and execution in the location of the home. It should not mean a designer is constantly absent. The best international firms know when to draw on local knowledge, when to bring a specialist from elsewhere, how to manage shipping and installation, and how to communicate while the client is traveling. The result should feel rooted in its location and coherent with the family’s other residences.

BHLI works across nineteen markets on four continents, including Beverly Hills, Bel Air, New York, London, Paris, Milan, Monaco, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Riyadh, Jeddah, Doha, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Hong Kong. I value that reach because it makes the firm more attentive to difference. A home in each of those places has distinct light, habits, rules, crafts, and hospitality. The designer’s task is not to impose a universal look. It is to find the precise version of the client’s life that belongs there.

Wellness and technical sophistication are becoming part of the standard

The next measure of luxury is not only visual. Clients increasingly ask what their home will do for sleep, air quality, water, acoustic calm, thermal comfort, and the way a body feels after months inside the environment. That conversation requires the designer to collaborate intelligently with architects, engineers, fabricators, and, where appropriate, clinical advisers. Wellness design is not a collection of gadgets. It is a coordinated approach to the systems and materials that shape daily life.

At BHLI, I have developed the Nine Pillars wellness architecture framework: circadian lighting, air quality, material purity, water purification, EMF shielding, acoustic design, thermal comfort, grounding, and blood-filtration infrastructure where appropriate. This work is informed by clinical partners Dr. Thom Lobe, MD, and Dr. Fouad Ghaly, MD. It does not replace medical care; it means the home can support the goals a client is already pursuing rather than working against them.

Discretion and personal involvement are not luxuries; they are prerequisites

The best luxury designer must be trusted with more than a budget. They may learn a family’s routines, security needs, collections, staff arrangements, future plans, and personal preferences. That information deserves a confidentiality standard as serious as the design standard. Ask how a firm handles NDAs, photographs, project addresses, vendor communications, and staff access. Listen to how it speaks about past clients. A designer who treats privacy casually is giving you useful information.

Personal involvement matters for a related reason. You should know who will make the critical creative decisions, who will attend to difficult site questions, and whether the person you hired has the capacity to lead the project through installation. My practice is deliberately selective because I remain personally involved in every commission I take. The goal is not to make the client feel attended to. It is to make sure the design argument remains intact when hundreds of individual decisions begin to test it.

Kenneth Bordewick: a case for the client who wants a complete environment

OK! Magazine called me “The Billion Dollar Designer,” and Covet House called me the “Father of Ultra Luxury.” Those descriptions are flattering, but they matter less to me than the body of work behind them: three decades designing for private clients, royalty, heads of state, celebrities, and hospitality environments; a practice that joins classic glamour to contemporary intelligence; and a Gemological Institute of America background in gemology and diamondology that continues to inform my eye for rare materials and fine detail.

For the client whose brief requires global experience, a high degree of discretion, personal involvement, and an interest in wellness architecture as well as beauty, that combination is what BHLI offers. For a different client or property, another designer may be the better fit. That is not hedging; it is how responsible luxury design works. The best outcome begins with an honest match.

If you would like to explore whether BHLI is the right fit for your residence, contact kenneth@bhli.us or call +1 (310) 467-5635 for a private consultation. We will discuss the home, the family, the ambition, and the work required to make it last.