Anna Arsentyeva | Russian-Speaking Interior Designer in Dubai

Where I work

Two markets that, for my clients, are really one.

A large part of my client base moves between the UAE and Russia. For business, for family, or simply for the winter. I design for both sides of that life, in the same language and to the same standard.

Работаю с русскоязычными клиентами в ОАЭ и России: квартиры, виллы и общественные пространства, полный цикл от планировочного решения до авторского надзора. Можно написать по-русски.

United Arab EmiratesBased in Dubai, I take on full design projects and renovations across the UAE: apartments, villas and the occasional commercial space, generally by appointment given how often clients are travelling between the two markets.

RussiaThe studio has its roots in Saint Petersburg, where part of the team is still based, with regular projects in Moscow. Most of what gets built there today started as a conversation held in Dubai.

Education

Saint Petersburg, then Florence.

I trained first at the Saint-Petersburg Design School, then completed a Master’s Degree in Interior Design at the Florence Design Academy in Italy. Florence is a city built almost entirely from proportion and restraint, and it is where I learned to look at a room as architecture first and decoration second. That habit has never left the way I work.

It also gave me a way of working that travels well. The same training that shaped a small apartment in Saint Petersburg holds up in a beachfront tower in Dubai. Proportion and material do not need translating between markets, even when the client does.

Private dining table set for six by Anna Arsentyeva, with a backlit glass wine cabinet behind it

Approach

Design comes before decoration.

The floor plan and the proportions of a room decide almost everything before a single finish is chosen. Get that part right and the room barely needs decorating. Get it wrong, and no amount of styling saves it.

Proportion FirstCeiling heights, sightlines and where the light falls through the day are settled before a single material is discussed. A beautiful finish on a badly proportioned room still reads as a badly proportioned room.

One Material SpeaksEvery room gets one material or colour allowed to lead: a stone, a timber, a tone. Everything else is chosen to support it, not compete with it.

Order a project

Tell me about the space.

Where it is, how big it is, and who is going to live in it. I’ll come back with how I’d run the project, stage by stage.