Where Do Interior Designers Shop? 480+ Best UK Suppliers
As an interior designer, the question I’m asked most is “where do interior designers shop?” These days the full list lives in my interior design supplier directory, 480+ brands in one searchable page. This post is the tour: the best places I’ve found for furniture, lighting, flooring, fabrics, accessories, window treatments and artwork.
Qualified designers leave design school with almost no sourcing knowledge, which surprised me too. The little black book is the thing that actually separates a working designer from a talented amateur, and it takes years to build, who’s who, what quality really looks like at each price point, where the cutest mid-century coffee table actually comes from. It’s how a designer hits the brief inside the budget without wasting a week hunting.
Sixteen years in, this is mine.
Before you jump in
I turned this post into a proper searchable directory: 480+ brands, from paint to sofas, gathered over sixteen years of designing homes, including the trade-only houses you can’t normally buy from. Pick a category, click through and shop. I so should be charging for it, but it’s free.
Send me the directoryInterior Design Trade Suppliers (And How to Buy From Them)
Worth knowing before you get into the lists: many of these are interior design trade suppliers, meaning they deal mainly with the trade rather than the public. A good independent interiors showroom near you can usually order from them (mine is William Robinson in Nottingham), and if you’d like trade pricing yourself without becoming a designer, I’ll show you the shortcut at the end of this post.
So, here are my top trade suppliers to add to your own little black book.
Where do show homes get their furniture?
While we’re here, the other question I’m always asked, and the answer is a whole little industry most people have never heard of. It depends on the stylist. Some buy at wholesale from exactly the kind of trade suppliers on this page and build up their own stock, renting the same pieces out show home after show home. Others hire everything in from dedicated furniture rental companies.
The wholesale houses often sell in curated collections, ranges designed to work together, so you can get that pulled-together designer look without agonising over whether the pieces match. Coach House and Gallery Direct (both in the furniture list below) are a perfect fit for exactly this. The polished show home look isn’t deep pockets: it’s trade sourcing, rental stock and curated collections doing the matching for you.
Where Do Interior Designers Shop // Art
Art is the fastest way to make a room feel finished and personal, and these are the galleries and print houses I actually order from, covering everything from contemporary prints to traditional pieces.
Where Do Interior Designers Shop For Flooring
Flooring is where quality shows and where mistakes get expensive, you’re not repainting a floor on a whim. These are my trusted names for carpets, rugs, LVT and hardwood.
Alternative Flooring (Carpets + Rugs)
Cormar Carpets (Carpets + Rugs)
Crucial Trading (Carpets + Rugs)
Brintons (Carpets + Rugs)
Roger Oates (Carpets + Rugs)
Jacaranda (Carpets + Rugs)
Harvey Maria (LVT)
Flooring Supplies (Karndean)
UK Flooring Direct (Hardwood + LVT)
Where Do Interior Designers Shop for Furniture and Decor
The big-ticket category, and the one where knowing the supplier matters most, because a sofa that looks the part in photos can be a stapled MDF frame underneath. From contemporary to traditional, these are the furniture and accessories houses I come back to.
Buying a sofa specifically? I wrote a whole honest guide to where interior designers buy sofas, frames, fillings, auction bargains and all.
Where Do Interior Designers Shop For Paint
Paint is the cheapest thing on this page and the one people agonise over most. These are the brands worth your testers. If choosing the colour is the hard part, start with my guide to how to choose paint colours. and if you’re wondering whether designer paint is worth the extra, my honest verdict is here.
Bauwerk (obsessed with limewash)
Coat (very highly rated)
Cornish Milk Mineral Paint (mineral paint)
Where Do Interior Designers Shop For Lighting
Lighting sets the mood of a room more than any other single decision, and cheap fittings announce themselves. From traditional chandeliers to modern LEDs, these are my go-to lighting suppliers.
Where Do Interior Designers Shop For Wallcoverings
Wallpaper adds colour, pattern and texture in a way paint can’t, and digital printing has made the good stuff far more accessible than it used to be (make sure you look at Coordonne). These are the wallcovering houses I trust.
Where Do Interior Designers Shop For Window Treatments
The right window treatment finishes a room, and the wrong one cheapens everything around it. Poles and tracks, trimmings, blinds and shutters, these are my names.
Where Do Interior Designers Shop For Curtain Poles & Tracks
Where Do Interior Designers Shop For Decorative Trimmings
Where Do Interior Designers Shop For Window Treatments + Blinds Brands
That’s the tour. And here’s the shortcut I promised: members of my Home Design Vault get trade pricing at hundreds of these brands, the discounts designers get, without the design degree. That’s the “shop like a professional” answer in one line.
Get the full little black book
Everything above is the short version. The full directory is 480+ brands you won’t find by googling, the ones behind my 360+ room schemes and the five houses I’ve renovated myself. Every supplier earned its place in real rooms, on real budgets. Nothing is paid placement, and nothing is listed that I wouldn’t buy myself.
If you’re sick of googling trying to find the good stuff, it’s yours.
Send me the directory