Design
with
purpose
My approach rests on three principles that travel from project to project.
2026Lara Bruce · Interior designer · LJ Interiors
Interiors built as a journey, from the first threshold to the last quiet room.
See the workAbout
I'm Lara Bruce, an interior designer completing my BA in Interior Design at Vega School, Emeris Cape Town, and practising as LJ Interiors. Every scheme starts with the site and the people who will gather in it: how they arrive, what they do there, and where they come to rest. Earth, timber, stone and steel do the rest.






In her words
Before I knew how to design a space, I knew how I wanted one to feel.
Growing up on the Eastern Cape coastline, my sense of home became inseparable from the landscape and the people I loved. I design to offer that same warmth, while leaving room for someone else's story.
I knew it in the smell of birch wood on the beach, a braai bringing people together and the last light of a South African sunset. Growing up on the Eastern Cape coastline, my sense of home became inseparable from the landscape and the people I loved. Those memories are where my design philosophy begins: with the way our surroundings become part of who we are.
Travelling from a young age opened that world wider. It showed me how much there is beyond the familiar, how many ways there are to live, to create and to belong. I carry that curiosity alongside my roots, allowing each new experience to change how I see.
My creativity moves through abstract connections, colours, textures and possibilities. Painting was my first way of expressing what a place meant to me; interior design allows me to turn that feeling into something another person can inhabit.
I am drawn to the quiet intimacy of design: light that softens a room, a texture that invites touch, the feeling of your shoulders relaxing as you walk through a door.
My ideas will continue to evolve, but this intention stays with me: to create spaces that offer the warmth I associate with home, while leaving room for someone else's story.
Selected work
From a biodiversity centre in the Limpopo bushveld to a café for a leather house and a studio of her own, each project is shaped by where it sits and who it is for.
Design
with
purpose
My approach rests on three principles that travel from project to project.
2026
A café and microroastery for a South African leather house, built from the same materials as the bags: burgundy marble, dark oak and tan leather.
The roasting line sits in full view of the bar, and the bags are shown on marble shelves like pieces in a gallery.
LJ Interiors
Issue 01 · 2026
The
next
room
Available for internships, collaborations and commissions across South Africa.
