What can rugs bring to an interior? What is the golden rule of rug selection and at what stage of the project is it considered? Hear from three highly successful international interior designers as they reveal their love of stair runners and their individual approaches to framing zones, setting the right tone, colour contrasts and defining a space with rugs, while taking the materials, techniques, tactility, cleaning, traffic, energy flow and sustainablity into account. Also, can custom rugs be an investment and when is the right time to order custom rugs?
Vanessa Brady SBID 
Erinn Valencich Erinn V Design 
Shalini Misra Shalini Misra Ltd 
Kar Hwa Ho Zaha Hadid Architects
Vanessa Brady, the chair of this discussion, is an international multi-award winning interior designer, business consultant and founder of the Society of British and International Design. Her award-winning portfolio includes projects for Hard Rock Cafe, the Design Council, Unilever, the Sultan of Brunei and the King of Saudi Arabia. In 2014 she was awarded an OBE for her services to interior design and the UK economy. An inspirational speaker and spokesperson for interior design, she says: ‘Events like COVER Connect are keeping the industry rolling by providing essential engagement between quality suppliers and the world’s most amazing designers.’
Erinn Valencich, an interior designer and real estate developer, has spent over sixteen years designing for an international roster of discerning clients. Her designs have featured in Architectural Digest, Elle Décor, Traditional Home, The New York Times and House Beautiful. She is known for her own collection for Baldwin Hardware, Hollywood Hills by Erinn V., and works with brands such as HGTV, NBC, The View, eBay, Oprah and The Today Show. Her desire to find interior solutions for herself and other designers inspired the founding of her furniture brand and more recently the creation of a rug collection.
Shalini Misra runs an interior design studio in London called Shalini Misra Ltd, providing luxury interiors for residential developments. Shalini Misra trained as an architect in Delhi before specialising in Urban Planning at the University of Colombia in New York. Finally, in London, she studied Virtual Reality in Architecture. In 2020 she felt it was time to share her insight and knowledge, bringing together often lesser-known suppliers who offer extraordinarily high-quality items. She describes the result, The Design Buzz, as ‘a celebration of the companies, characters and passions that bring these wonders to our homes and our lives’.
Kar-Hwa Ho, Head of Interior Architecture with Zaha Hadid Architects, first worked with Zaha Hadid in the 1980s at the beginning of the practice. During this time he worked closely with the studio founder on a number of competitions and architectural projects. After two decades in which he had executive posts with Kohn Pedersen Fox and Louis Vuitton Malletier, he re-joined ZHA in 2014 to set up and lead the new ZHA Interior Architecture cluster. His expertise in retail, commercial and residential interiors has significantly strengthened ZHA’s position in bespoke interiors, furniture and product design for both private and public projects.
