Dark, theatrical and impossibly inviting. Dimore Studio makes rooms that feel as though something interesting happened in them just before you arrived.
So how does it make a room glow?
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Walnut and umber, with jewel colours laid on top.
The ceiling is never an afterthought.
Every detail works in full, or with a lighter touch.
Emiliano Salci and Britt Moran founded the studio in Milan in 2003, and they design the way a director dresses a set. A Mayfair supper club takes its cue from Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love. A train becomes a run of richly coloured carriages, each its own scene. A listed Belgravia flat keeps every cornice and moulding, then is coloured, lit and layered until it glows.
Yes, it's theatrical. But these are rooms made to be lived in: to sink into, to linger in, to lap up. The drama is never there just for show.
Rather than try to cover everything, I picked out some of its most recognisable projects: homes in London, Milan and Saint-Tropez, a Mayfair supper club, a Brera trattoria, a grand hotel bistrot and a train. The secret isn't dark walls and purple velvet. It's how the whole room is made to glow.
This is my decode of the studio's work from the outside looking in. You may well see its rooms differently.
Each detail comes two ways: go for it, or go light.
01
Walnut, tobacco, chocolate and umber make the backdrop. Then the materials go to work: brass catches the light, lacquer throws it back, velvet soaks it up. That's the difference between a dark room and a rich one.
Go for it
Walls and woodwork in one deep, warm shade, with brass and lacquer to catch the light.
Go light
One warm, dark wall behind a brass lamp.
02
On top of that dark base go the jewel colours: aubergine, plum, burgundy, oxblood. They're what you remember, yet they're surprisingly demure: in the photographs I measured, they never cover more than a tenth of the picture. They sit on a velvet chair, a carpet, a lacquered sideboard, always from the same family as the dark behind them, only richer.
A burgundy chair on its own is just a burgundy chair. Put it in the right room and it becomes the whole point.
Go for it
A velvet sofa or armchair in aubergine or plum.
Go light
A velvet cushion or a lampshade in one jewel colour.
03
The ceiling is part of the design, not the bit left white at the end, and it's the detail I'd borrow first. Saffron overhead at Caruso Nuovo, glossy terracotta coffers at Trattoria del Ciumbia, a different colour in every carriage of the Orient Express.
A white ceiling is where a dark room leaks its mood. Colour it, and the room closes around you like a theatre once the house lights go down. Add a soft sheen and the lamplight plays across it, bringing deep colours to life.
The one exception proves the point. In the sunlit Saint-Tropez flat, in a 1930s building designed like an ocean liner, the ceilings stay white. Dimore reads the place first, and on the Riviera the light does the work.
Go for it
Take the wall colour across the ceiling, in eggshell or a soft sheen.
Go light
Pick out the cornice or ceiling rose in a deeper shade.
04
Twin sconces, matching vases, a pair of armchairs facing across a table. Symmetry is Dimore's quiet organising principle: when the colour is rich and the materials compete for attention, a matching pair steadies the room. Kelly Wearstler often plays with near-matches. Dimore tends to commit.
When two aren't enough, it skips three and goes straight to a crowd: five silk lanterns in a row at Leo's, a line of 1970s lamps down Salci's own corridor, a ceiling full of Murano chandeliers at Eaton Square. Forget the rule of three.
Go for it
Matching pairs of lamps, chairs and sconces, or a row of pendants down a long table.
Go light
Two matching lamps on a sideboard.
05
Curves run through almost every project: round tables, globe lights, oval ceilings, banquettes that bend. Then comes the counterpoint: a diamond. A harlequin bar front at Leo's, a trellis over palm wallpaper at Caruso Nuovo, a lattice-fronted brass cabinet at Eaton Square, a harlequin wall closing the lounge car on the Orient Express. It's the grit in all that softness. Without it, the curves would turn sweet.
Go for it
A trellis or harlequin wallpaper behind a round table.
Go light
A harlequin rug, or a diamond-patterned cushion on a curved chair.
Shop the details
Pieces chosen to show the details, not the studio's own designs.
SHOP THE DIMORE STUDIO EDIT →Why it works
Every room is built in layers, revealed bit by bit.
A warm, dark shell. Brass and lacquer to catch the light. A jewel colour on the soft things. A matching pair to steady it, a diamond to unsettle it. Look once and you see the colour; look again and you find the brass, the pair of lamps, the diamond in the rug.
And the layers carry from room to room. Each room, or each carriage, has its own colour, yet the same brass, the same dark timber and the same lamps run through all of them, so the mood builds as you move through. Different rooms, one story.
Cold white bulbs and downlights: they flatten a dark room in seconds. And aubergine on every wall: the jewel is the punctuation, not the sentence.
What makes it livable is everything underneath the drama: the continuity, the depth of colour, the layering, the richness. It's considered, and it never feels like pastiche.
If you're trying to recreate it, the risk is that it tips into hotel, or worse, theme pub. Many of Dimore's best-known rooms are bars and restaurants, made to impress a stranger for an evening. At home the look needs to be lived in: books, family things, the odd chip in the lacquer. That's what turns a theatrical set into a home.
It's also more disciplined than it first looks. Dimore doesn't throw every era together. It picks a period, mostly mid-century Italy with the odd older antique, and commits. Even its own new furniture is drawn in that language. Choose your decade and stay with it.
And it works here. Two of the projects are in London, one of them a listed Belgravia flat, and both are beautiful. Jewel tones look as good under a British sky as an Italian one, as long as the base underneath is warm.
Nor is it all or nothing. Every detail can be done with a lighter touch: go for it in a dining room or a snug, go light everywhere else.
Which details appear in which project. The jewel colour never takes more than a tenth of the picture.
The projects: Leo's at The Arts Club, London (supper club, 2017), Caruso Nuovo at the Grand Hotel et de Milan (bistrot, 2023), Trattoria del Ciumbia, Milan (restaurant, 2024), Étage 3 at Latitude 43, Saint-Tropez (apartment, 2025), La Dolce Vita Orient Express (train, 2025), a flat in Eaton Square, London, and Milano Indipendenza, Emiliano Salci's own apartment.
The designers
Dimore Studio: Emiliano Salci and Britt Moran
Interiors, furniture and lighting, Milan
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A warm, dark base of walnut, tobacco, chocolate and umber, with one jewel colour on top: aubergine, plum, burgundy or oxblood. In the projects I looked at, the jewel colour stays under a tenth of the room.
Yes. Eaton Square is a flat in a listed Belgravia building. Keep the cornicing, colour it, and take the colour up onto the ceiling.
Not if it's warm and well lit. Dark walls soften the corners, and lamps with a sheen overhead keep the room glowing.
No. One good mid-century find from an auction does more than a roomful of new furniture. Pick a decade and stay with it.
Spotted a detail I've missed, or think I've got Dimore wrong? Tell me on Instagram @everythingbut.theedit.
Project details from dimorestudio.eu. Illustrations by Everything But.