The award winning, family run cabinet and furniture maker announces its rebranding to Herringbone House with a new 4 floor studio opening in the heart of Canterbury. With the opening of Herringbone House, founders Elly Simmons and William Durrant have created an inviting space that feels nothing like a traditional showroom and more like a luxury hotel, changing the traditional furniture and kitchen industry showroom concept.
Today, 3 October 2024, Herringbone, announces that the company has rebranded to Herringbone House with the opening of their new 4-storey studio in the heart of Canterbury. The company has long been designing and making much more than kitchens and with their new studio they are now able to showcase their breadth of work. Herringbone House is now open and is an inviting space where clients will be able to discover a wealth of beautifully designed tables, bars, wardrobes, bathroom storage, dressers, utility rooms, entertainment units, boot rooms, wine rooms and so much more.
Herringbone House celebrates 10 years in business and continues to strive to push design trends, being at the forefront of progressing the industry in working standards and craftsmanship. Full joinery projects are frequently being created as clients see the benefits of bespoke and well-designed joinery throughout their home. Everything Herringbone House makes is handcrafted by their skilled craftsmen in their workshop in Canterbury.
Herringbone House: The New Studio Concept
With the opening of Herringbone House, founders Elly Simmons and William Durrant have created an inviting space overlooking Canterbury Cathedral that feels nothing like a traditional showroom. Herringbone House is a space where you want to sit at the bar for hours or cozy up in the seating to have a cuppa with a friend. When designing their new studio with in-house interior designer Martyna Nicolson, they focused on making it an entertaining space that pushes the traditional boundaries of what a showroom should be. They designed a large bar, library and upholstered comfy seating around the space. They even included a secret wine room, with access behind a library door.
The 1st floor space can be rented out as an event space on its own, creating a new concept for displaying and selling full home kitchens, furniture and interior design projects. While some parts of Herringbone House look and feel like you are visiting a friend’s home, other parts feel more like a luxury hotel that you visit for a weekend retreat. Every room in the grade-2 listed building has been designed to show what can be achieved for each room in your home, both from an interior design and bespoke cabinetry design perspective. Working with some of the best interior retailers such as House of Hackney, Dedar and Pierre Frey, they’ve created an inviting space, decorated with curated art, antiques fair finds and images of their team. Everything is made by Herringbone with the highest level of craftmanship and quality. The top two floors will be used as rooms to rent and will commence in 2025.
William Durrant, owner of Herringbone House said: “We are very proud to be marking the next phase for Herringbone, by opening Herringbone House. Our new studio showcases just how great our team is at all we do; everything here has been designed and made by us, including the sofas and tables. We have created an inviting space that is not like anything seen before in the industry. The large bar we have feels more like a luxury hotel than a kitchen studio and happens to now be my favourite bar in Canterbury. The studio sits in the heart of Canterbury, right across from the Cathedral with its historic views. Being in Canterbury was very important to us, although most of our projects are in London, Canterbury is home for us, it’s where we first began and where our workshop is. To be able to do all this over the last 10 years, without compromising on our design, craftmanship and environmental ethos is something that we are very proud of.”
Every design is still bespoke
Herringbone House prides themselves on employing the best local craftsmen to offer the best possible bespoke projects and products of the highest quality and this will continue to be the case. The company has gone from strength to strength in the 10 years since William Durrant started the business.
They expanded the workshop in 2021, bringing in the highest tech to help the cutting process with a CNC machine. They announced their own paint range in 2022, Herringbone Paints, with more than 18 colours to choose from and with custom-made colours available for clients. Interior design and colour support services were added as an offering in 2023 to all existing clients with the hire of Martyna Nicolson. In addition, Directors and Owners William Durrant and Elly Simmons, this year became the first company in the UK to shake up the industry by banning high-silica engineered stone from all of their offerings due to concerning finders.
The news follows Herringbone House’s environmental ethos promise
Our ethos has always been so important to how we run our family business. This year Herringbone became the first company in the industry in the UK to ban the use and sale of high-silica worktops in order to protect their team, suppliers and clients and encourage the industry to follow suit.
As part of the company’s ethos Herringbone House has made a conscious decision from the beginning to only use sustainably sourced materials, make each design in the UK in their Canterbury-based workshop, use water-based low VOC paint as part of their Herringbone Paints range and dedicate a tree to the National Forest for each project made.
These are all small, but important things Herringbone House does to reduce their impact on the environment and on the industry. This new venture continues to be part of that promise and commitment. This again is very rare in this industry and while it is never an easy option, it stays true to the company’s ethos.