The Looking Glass was created by Catherine Corkish-Jones; a passionate designer with years of experience in the property market.

“Well, now that we have seen each other,” said the unicorn, “if you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you.”
— Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There

"I have never been able to understand why cheap books should not also be well designed, for good design is no more expensive than bad." Allen Lane

Whilst this quote discusses the virtues of well designed paperbacks by the trailblazer of Penguin Books, the sentiment is exactly the reason I work in affordable housing.

Many years experience within the social housing sector combined with a formal education in, and experience as, an interior designer means I run a design studio doing things differently. At The Looking Glass I deliver design solutions to improve the places we call home.

I provide consultation advice and one-off workshops to RP Development teams or sustainability teams to help project officers during the design process to ensure the best possible, most sustainable design solutions as well as design and fit out of show homes to help secure sales of your affordable sale units.

I have worked in the social housing sector for well over a decade meaning I am up to date with the current operating context and constantly seeking opportunities for improvement. I understand first-hand what having a decent place to live can mean to people having been lucky enough to grow up in a housing association home.

I believe passionately that quality design, sustainability and affordable properties should go hand in hand. With that ethos in mind The Looking Glass was born and continues to be curiouser and curiouser about how to push the boundaries of residential design.

So here we are; trying to get the word out that you can design beautiful, innovative properties that work for both people and planet. For our consultations we can advise on best practice in designing for neurodivergence or internal layouts for multi-generational living. For show homes we specify recycled paints and work collaboratively with professional craftspeople to reuse furniture and fabrics as many times as possible so that you can get as much use out of your inventory without compromising on style or design. We also design for end of life, we really consider what goes in…so you can deal with it easily when it inevitably comes out again.

Step through The Looking Glass and see what wonders we can create together.

A woman shakes out a piece of fabric in front of a weathered wooden clad wall

Fabric

When is a pair of curtains not a pair of curtains? When we turn them in to scatter cushions…or upholstery for an armchair…or roman blinds…or simply another pair of curtains. We think about the fabric we use at the start of one project to ensure it can be altered and reused again somewhere else without compromising on style

paint it green

Or blue, red, purple, pink…it’s not the colour, it’s the paint! Where possible we will always specify the use of high-quality 100% reclaimed paint which otherwise would find its way in to our waste streams. It is estimated that 55 million litres of paint bought in the UK each year is wasted, by either sitting in sheds/garages or being thrown into landfill.