Residential architects in London.

Coffey Residential is a residential architecture studio in Clerkenwell. We design new houses, and the whole-house refurbishments that bring older ones back to life, a handful each year, across London and beyond.

Phil Coffey founded the practice in 2005. Twenty years on, he is still on every project, from the first conversation to the last day on site. We are deliberately small. We take on a few houses a year so that each one gets the attention a home deserves.

The work is residential because we believe the house is the most important building you ever commission. It is where you wake, where your children grow, where you spend the quiet hours of a winter afternoon. A good house is not a luxury. It is the difference between a building you put up with and a home you settle into for decades.

Phil started the studio with one rule: do fewer houses, better. The person at the first meeting is the person on site for the last snag. There is no account manager and no handover to a junior team. You work with the people whose names are on the door.

A house takes time to get right. We would rather spend an extra month on a stair than rush a decision you will live with for thirty years. Most of our clients come to us through other clients, which tells you most of what you need to know about how the work is run. You can read what some of them say on the studio page.

Light is the first thing we draw and the last thing we check. How a room reads at half past four on a February afternoon. Where the sun lands on the kitchen floor in June. Whether the stair gathers the morning or loses it.

Daylight is the cheapest, most powerful material a house has, and the easiest to waste. A rooflight in the right place can change how a whole floor feels. A window an inch wider, or a wall left out, can turn a dark back room into the place everyone gathers. We spend a lot of time on this, because it is the thing people feel long after they have stopped noticing the joinery: a house that is good to be in, hour by hour, season by season.

It is also why the work tends toward calm. We are not interested in houses that shout. We are interested in houses that hold light well and age slowly.

Most of our houses are in London, and we know the boroughs, the planning officers, the conservation areas, and the particular problems of a Victorian terrace, a mews, a warehouse conversion or a set-back penthouse. A few of the London homes we have designed, by area:

We are not only a London studio. Some of the work we are proudest of is a new house in open country, where the site sets the brief and the building can answer to the land, the weather and the light rather than the party wall. We design new homes well beyond the capital:

New houses on open sites are some of our favourite work, and often our best. You can see the full portfolio, in London and out of it, on the homes page.

In London, the design and the planning permission are the same conversation. A clever house that will never be approved is not a clever house. We draw with the planning history in the room.

We handle planning applications, permitted development, pre-application advice, listed building consent and conservation area work across the London boroughs. Much of our work is on period homes, Victorian, Georgian and Edwardian, where the trick is to make the house work for the way people live now without erasing what makes it worth keeping.

We have taken on sites next to listed buildings, above listed vaults, on tight urban infill plots and on set-back penthouse floors. The constraints are usually where the good ideas come from.

Phil was named Young Architect of the Year by the Architects’ Journal in 2012. The studio was Homes Architect of the Year at the 2025 British Homes Awards. The work has been shortlisted for the RIBA House of the Year three times, has won RIBA Awards at London, regional and national level, and has been recognised by Grand Designs, Dezeen and the Telegraph.

We mention this not to collect trophies, but because when you are trusting someone with your home, it helps to know the work stands up to scrutiny. You can see the awards and press in full on the press page.

Do I need an architect for my project?

Not legally, for most domestic work. But for anything beyond the simplest job, an architect earns their fee. We design the house you actually want, get it through planning, draw it so the builder prices and builds it properly, and protect your interests on site. On a house, the cost of getting it wrong is far higher than the cost of getting it right.

What areas of London do you work in?

All of them. Most of our work is in central, north and west London (Kensington, Clerkenwell, Islington, Notting Hill, Barnes and the surrounding boroughs), but we take projects across the capital and, occasionally, beyond it.

How long does a residential project take?

A whole-house project is usually measured in years rather than months once you include design, planning and construction. A typical shape is several months of design and planning, then roughly a year on site. We give you a realistic timeline at the first meeting, not an optimistic one.

How much does it cost to hire a residential architect?

Architect’s fees are normally a percentage of the construction cost, agreed up front. The more important figure is the build cost, which depends entirely on the house. We talk openly about budget from the first conversation, because a design you cannot afford to build helps no one.

Do you design new houses or refurbishments?

Both. A good deal of our work begins with an existing house, a Victorian terrace, a 1930s semi, a place that has been added to four times, and the question of how to make it work now. We build new when the site calls for it.