Website creation for an interior designer in London and Paris: Madame Design

Client

Madame Design — a bespoke interior design practice founded in 2023 by Valérie Gnansia Arquier, working on luxury residential renovations in London and across France. Her background spans interior architecture and fashion. The site's line: Inspired by you.

Industry

Interior design and architecture — an independent practice serving private clients in two countries

Services provided

Website creation from scratch on Ghost CMS
Managed Ghost CMS hosting
An image-first portfolio structure
Services, About and Contact pages
Newsletter and Google review integration
Client training and ongoing support

Project objective

Valérie Gnansia Arquier had no website. She had a portfolio — ten completed renovations in Paris, Neuilly, Boulogne, Asnières and London — living in photographs, and a practice built entirely on referral.

For an interior designer, that is a real ceiling. The work is visual, the buying decision is visual, and a prospective client who cannot see the work will not call. Three objectives:

Put the work first. Not a homepage that explains the philosophy above the fold and shows a thumbnail below it. The photographs are the argument.
Make her self-sufficient on projects. A designer's portfolio is never finished. If publishing a completed renovation requires an agency, the site is out of date within a quarter.
Serve two markets from one site. London and Paris, without splitting the practice in two.

The challenge

Designing for photography that varies wildly in aspect ratio, from a tall fireplace shot to a wide living room
Keeping the site fast when every page is essentially a gallery
Structuring a services offer that ranges from a single styling consultation to full project coordination
Giving a designer — not a technician — a publishing flow she can use without help

Solutions implemented

A homepage that is a gallery, not a brochure

The homepage is the portfolio. A grid of projects, each one a large photograph with its title, with one project marked as featured and the rest loading progressively as the visitor scrolls. The only text above it is a single positioning paragraph: bespoke interior design in London and Paris, luxury residential renovations, from concept to completion.

That restraint is a deliberate choice. A design practice's site is judged on taste in the first two seconds, and nothing communicates taste less than a wall of copy.

Project pages that read like a project sheet

Each project opens with the facts a client actually wants — location, project type, scope, style — then gives the photographs room. For example: Boulevard Saint-Germain, Paris 6th, duplex apartment renovation, interior design and bespoke furniture and project management, contemporary Parisian with period features.

Short, factual, then the images. And each project ends with a related-projects block, so a visitor who likes one renovation immediately sees two more. That single pattern is what turns a portfolio visit from one page into three.

Slugs that describe the work

Because Ghost puts URL control in the editor, each project sits at an address that describes it: /apartment-renovation-bryanston-square-london/, /duplex-renovation-paris-15th/, /studio-conversion-asnieres-sur-seine/.

This matters more for an interior designer than for almost any other profession. Nobody searches for a designer's name — they search for apartment renovation Paris 15 or interior designer Bryanston Square. Every project page is therefore a landing page for a specific kind of enquiry, in a specific place. Ten projects, ten doorways.

A services page that answers "what will this cost me in commitment?"

Rather than one undifferentiated offer, the site separates three levels of involvement: interior styling and furnishing for clients who want to refine a space without major works, design development covering moodboards, material research, supplier sourcing, technical drawings and 3D visuals, and project coordination overseeing craftsmen and suppliers through to delivery.

A prospective client can therefore self-select before the first call, which is the single most useful thing a service page can do for an independent practitioner.

Trust signals and audience

A newsletter signup collects prospects on her own list rather than a rented one, and a Google review link routes satisfied clients to the place where reviews actually influence local search. Small pieces, but they are what turn a portfolio into a business asset.

Need a portfolio site that shows the work properly? Book a free 30-minute video call — no commitment, and we'll look at your photographs and your structure together.

A step-by-step approach

1️⃣ Positioning and structure — what the practice sells, to whom, in which two cities, and how the site should be read.

2️⃣ Theme and gallery behaviour — image-first grid, progressive loading, handling for mixed aspect ratios.

3️⃣ Content build — ten projects published with their photographs, facts and descriptive slugs, plus Services, About and Contact.

4️⃣ Newsletter and reviews — subscription on her own domain, Google review routing.

5️⃣ Training and go-live — a working session on publishing a project from scratch, then launch on madamedesign.uk.

Who this applies to

The same structure serves any practice where the work is the pitch: interior designers and decorators, architects, landscape designers, photographers, furniture makers and craft studios. In each case the requirement is identical — large images treated well, project pages that double as local landing pages, and a publishing flow the practitioner uses without calling anyone.

If you are relying on Instagram as your portfolio, you are building your business on an address you don't own and a feed nobody can search. A proper site for an independent practitioner fixes both.

What the client runs herself

Valérie publishes her own projects. She uploads the photographs, writes the project facts, sets the slug and publishes — and she does, regularly: the portfolio has been added to and revised well after handover, which is the only real proof that a training session worked.

She also edits her About and Services pages herself. We host, maintain, back up and support.

Conclusion

A website for an interior designer is one of the few cases where the brief is genuinely simple and almost always executed badly: show the work, large, fast, and let the designer add to it.

Madame Design got exactly that — a gallery-first Ghost site where ten renovations each have their own searchable address, a services page that lets clients self-qualify, and a practitioner who keeps her portfolio current without an agency in the way.

Do you need a portfolio site that sells your work?

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