Inner Visions
Like her residential projects, interior designer Róisín Lafferty’s new Dublin gallery has an immersive quality that impacts visitors instantly, discovers Marie Kelly.
When visitors enter Róisín Lafferty’s Dublin gallery on Fitzwilliam Square, the award-winning interior designer and founder of the eponymous design practice Róisín Lafferty Studio, wants them to feel “calm and enchanted”. Stepping inside the gallery and showroom on the wettest, darkest January day, the impact is instant. The chaos and messiness of traffic-jammed, rain-soaked streets immediately dissolves in the awe-inspiring entrance hall. I feel a little like Dorothy landing in Oz; sepia-toned streets have been replaced by dramatic and colourful contrasts.
Occupying the ground floor and first floor of a traditional Georgian-square building – also home to Lafferty’s studio and HQ – the gallery captures the immersive atmosphere and sensory nature that have come to define her private residential projects. Taking inspiration from traditional Paris fashion ateliers, Lafferty has created a space that blends the comfort of home with the functionality of an atelier and the sophistication of a gallery. “I’ve always loved that vision of old fashion ateliers,” explains Lafferty. “For me, there was something really wonderful about the likes of Balenciaga and Chanel. They had a house that epitomized who they were, with layers and levels and everyone who worked for the house present. But it’s also where they hosted their shows, where their clients came for fittings. It was an encapsulation of who they were, of the brand itself,” she says.
The gallery is also a physical embodiment of the 39-year-old’s design philosophy. One of the most influential design voices in Ireland today, Lafferty has built a reputation over the past 15 years for creating exceptional spaces across luxury residential and hospitality projects, in which materiality, proportionality and practicality are balanced with intention, integrity and imagination. Lafferty explains that her practice has always been about “more than just creating beautiful-looking interiors”. “It’s about evoking a feeling, an encompassing atmosphere that is more than the sum of its parts.” The gallery embraces this MO with gusto, but it also keenly demonstrates the level of detail, execution and finish Lafferty’s practice has become renowned for.
Open less than a year, the gallery involved a substantial investment in time and money – “there’s no magic money buffer,” Lafferty qualifies – but it’s been a dream of the designer’s for a decade and the drive, determination and hard work appear to be paying off. The Róisín Lafferty Gallery recently won Best Cultural & Commercial Project at the Créateurs Design Awards 2026 in Paris, an international peer-to-peer design and architecture award that celebrates exceptional work in architecture and design from around the world. “We won the award for one of our residential projects a couple of years ago,” explains Lafferty, “but it’s a very different feeling when you win for something that’s entirely yours versus a client project – it’s a case of putting your whole heart there on the table,” she confesses. “Plus, we were up against Studiopepe, a Milanese interior architecture practice that I have always put on a pedestal. They’re the best of the best. The fact that we won was quite emotional and really special.”
Also serving as a showroom for Lafferty’s own furniture and lighting collections, called Sphere and Moonface respectively, the gallery gave its owner the nudge she needed to fulfil this long-held ambition. “I’ve wanted to design my own collections for a long time, but of course you never put yourself first when you have paying clients and pressures. It’s been too easy to let time pass without progressing these ideas into physical forms.” The Sphere collection was conceptualized eight years ago, explains Lafferty. “As was Moonface, so a big part of this project was to give these pieces a home,” she adds. Directly in front of me sits Lafferty’s bespoke Sphere Dining Table crafted from Tuscan Acquasanta marble. A triumph of materiality and dimensionality, its tones and textures have a sensuality that plays out quietly but confidently against its softly sculptural form. Like the gallery itself, it has scale, elegance and warmth.
The Goatstown native had initially considered showcasing only her own pieces. “But that’s not how we create interiors. It became clear as the process of establishing the gallery evolved that the space should be a curation of people we admire and love.” This includes vintage treasures by Jorge Zalszupin, furniture and lighting by Bryan O’Sullivan, Tom Faulkner and Edwyn James, as well as art by Jan Cools, Molly Judd and Daniëlle Siobhán. Lafferty is fully embracing her new role as a gallerist. “I’m wearing two hats now; I’m the designer, but I’m a gallerist too and it’s my job to promote the artists here and that’s something I find really exciting.”
Like a lot of creatives, Lafferty considers herself a storyteller at heart. As we sit down on mohair velvet Camaleonda modular sofas, the gallery tells a story of comfort as much as craft, curation and creativity. “I think we’re always telling different stories and that’s what draws people to us. Clients want a narrative, she explains. “And they want something that is just for them,” she adds. “Certain people have wonderful businesses with quite a distinct style, which they bring to each job. And a lot of people want that stamp. But I think each project is its own story and that means I can execute many different looks. It also means we’re always creatively stimulated. And the more we feel that as a team, the better our output.”
She references the practice’s well-publicised Cobalt Townhouse, a modern Dublin home that Lafferty brought a strikingly bold perspective to. “It’s more like an art installation than an interior,” she explains. “It was a bit of a wild card, but later we worked on a project that was incredibly refined and elegant; to be able to create those different atmospheres is where the fun is,” she admits. Anything with a sense of play and theatre appeals to the designer. “Art, furniture, lighting, interiors, fashion – it all bridges together; it’s all just a creative, playful way of thinking.”
Whatever the medium, the idea of transformation is endlessly fascinating to Lafferty and has been since childhood. “When I was young, Mr Ben was my favourite cartoon. I loved it so much because the character would walk into a costume shop every day, put on a different outfit and become somebody else.” Lafferty is admired as much for her unique and eclectic style as her elevated interior design. She’s an enormous fan of knitwear designer Colin Burke and last year invited him to shoot his autumn/winter collection at the gallery. Today, she looks immaculate in a heavily textured forest green dress. When I ask who she’s wearing, she smiles conspiratorally and replies, “Zara”. There’s something about Lafferty’s poise and polish that makes high-street look high-end.
Lafferty is a creative with the Midas touch and this puts the Roisín Lafferty Gallery in pole position to firm up Dublin’s international reputation as a center of design excellence, something Lafferty feels passionate about. “We all go to Milan Design Week and Copenhagen. These cities all have momentum. I know we’re a little way off that, but why can’t we have it here?” She references Making In in Cork, Design Kenmare and Dublin’s inaugural Design Week last year. We may be small, but there’s such creativity here, such wonderful artists. And people are drawn to Ireland,” she adds. “Never underestimate the power of Irishness in an international field. It’s time we maximised that.”
This article was originally published in The Sunday Times Ireland, February 2026