01
Valabh Residence, Entrance Hall
In progress · 2026
One material language — oak, stone and concealed light — carried across a main wall, a niche and a contained garden so arrival reads as a single gesture.
Beyond the need for space
is the need for place.
Studio Yulan is an established Johannesburg interior design studio — residential joinery, retail and workplace interiors, drawn with the knowledge of how they are manufactured.
Kitchen and dining — Johannesburg
Scroll ↓The studio
The work begins with how a room is used before it considers how it looks. Circulation, light, storage and the ordinary sequence of a day are resolved first; material and detail follow from them.
Projects run from first conversation through concept, documentation and manufacture to installation. Time spent in a cabinetry factory means drawings are made against what can actually be built.
Selected work
Full index — 10
02
The Kitchen Studio
2023 — 2025
Two years of built work: cabinetry and interiors taken from the first client consultation through factory production to final handover.
03
Monochrome House, Kitchen and Dining
2025
A kitchen worked entirely in greys, where the only permitted incident is stone. Everything else is held flat so the veining can carry the room.
04
Dressing Room
2025
A dressing room built as a set of glazed cases: smoked glass, black frames and warm internal light, so clothing becomes the only pattern in the room.
05
SADAG
An incubator for mental health support: a workplace insulated around the emotional weight of the work carried out inside it.
Philosophy
A room is understood before it is decorated. What people do in it, and how they want to feel while doing it, sets everything that follows.
Restraint is a working method rather than an aesthetic. Fewer materials, held to a tighter standard; fewer gestures, positioned precisely. Warmth comes from timber, stone and light, not from ornament.
Process
The approach in full- 01
Listening
How the space is used, what frustrates and what is worth keeping.
- 02
Direction
A spatial idea tested in plan and perspective before anything is specified.
- 03
Development
Layouts, joinery, materials and lighting resolved together.
- 04
Resolution
Documentation, fabrication and installation, overseen to handover.
Led by Nicole Sen
Trained in interior design, grounded in manufacturing. The two halves keep each other honest.
Two years consulting and designing at a cabinetry manufacturer taught the discipline that shapes the studio now: a detail is only good if the factory can build it, the installer can hang it, and the client still recognises the conversation that started it.
Start a project
Eight questions — mostly choices, very little typing. Enough for the studio to respond properly to what you have in mind.