About us

Custom furniture designers

We are an international team of custom furniture designers who design, engineer and deliver elegant, timeless, versatile furniture for notable buildings in places of learning, worship, culture, business & leisure.

Founded as an Arts & Crafts furniture maker in 1981 in London’s Covent Garden, we have evolved into the foremost design and engineering practice delivering complete projects and standard lines of world-class furniture that match the architectural style of iconic buildings in the USA, UK Europe, Middle East and China.

Working directly with blue-chip clients and leading design architects, we apply our knowledge of architecture, advanced spacial engineering and our deep research-based understanding of the operational needs of those who will occupy the spaces we furnish to engineer pieces intended to last multiple generations.

From classical to contemporary, we create timeless designs that read as a seamless part of the architecture they help to revitalise and bring to life. Flexibility and versatility are the central themes of our work, ensuring that spaces remain flexible and easily adapted for re-use and reconfiguration for decades to come. Sustainability, from the selection and use of sustainable and recyclable materials to circular business models, is integral to everything we do.

Our clients share an understanding of the difference between price and value. They invest for the long term, which ultimately carries a lower cost and a higher return.

View our work
10's
00's
90's
80's

2019 - Form wholly foreign-owned China subsidiary


2018 - Win 76 Trinity Place. US grows to 25% of our business


2017 - Keystone Academy, Beijing marks our first China project


2015 - Major US installs in New York, Yale, Valparaiso and San Francisco


2014 - Major projects at Yale and Yale NUS Singapore


2013 - Yale School of Management with Foster+ Partners


2012 - Multiple project wins drive overseas manufacturing expansion


2011 - HM The Queen opens the Sainsbury Botanic Institute


2010 - Major expansion of client base in civic, worship and education

2009 - UK Supreme Court opened by HM the Queen

2008 - Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds and Chichester Cathedral

2007 - Unilever becomes a client. Win UK Supreme Court

2006 - 25th anniversary. 50th Oxbridge college

2005 - Freehold purchase of the studio at 182 Drury Lane

2004 - Corporate offices for BP

2003 - Supreme Court Library, Edinburgh

2002 - Increasing use of glass, stone, resins and other materials

2001 - Millennium altar, Bristol Cathedral

2000 - First spa furniture for the Mandarin Oriental

1999 - Relationships established with Bisley, Wilkhan and Vitra; team expands

1997 - New British Embassy, Moscow

1996 - First standard range of meeting room tables and chairs developed

1994 - Adopts 100% outsourced model

1993 - Achieves ISO 9001 certification

1992 - British Embassy, Buenos Aires. Merton College become a client

1991 - First Oxbridge commission (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge); first use of CAD

1990 - Establishment of workshop in Tisbury, Wiltshire

1987 - First adoption of outsourced production

1986 - Designs for John Lewis Partnership, Liberty’s, Heals, and GTC.

1985 - Formation of Luke Hughes & Co Ltd - custom furniture designers

Materials expertise . . .

Designed for manufacture

Unlike a millworker or joiner, the Luke Hughes team are custom furniture designers who design world class furniture in a combination of materials. So, while the majority of our work does contain timbers, we have significant expertise in other materials.

Whether it's oiled bronze for an Ark of the Covenant, stainless steel for a research lab, bronze, glass, marble or stone for a church, we know how to design, detail, manufacture and produce with it.

With this we have developed specialist skills in the design and production of original lighting and integrate power and data, correctly specified for the destination country, into most of our pieces.

We design in

Timbers

68

Metals

35

Glass & stone

28

Lighting & electrics

18

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What our clients say . . .

I wanted to say how much I have appreciated and admired your design skills and determination to get things exactly right - it's an all too rare contemporary synthesis between architecture, space and furniture.

Alan Stanton | Stanton Williams

You'll be pleased to know that the Newnham furniture is standing up superbly to the rigours of college life and, 25 years on, still looks like new. It is a great testament to the skills and workmanship of your team.

Dame Patricia Hodgson | Principal, Newnham College, Cambridge

It looks modern but is deeply rooted in the English tradition of robust design and high craftsmanship. 

Cabinet Maker Journal

Some of our team

Luke Hughes

Founder & Creative Director

Richard Lockyer

Chief Operations Officer

Joe Green

Head Of Operations

Laura Tunstall

Senior Designer

Chloe Harrison

Project Buyer