Interior designer Brisbane: Luxxe Interiors

Luxxe Interiors is a Gold Coast interior design studio led by Tammy Brazel, designing homes across South East Queensland, including Brisbane, since 2019. Tammy holds a Bachelor's Degree in Design and has specialised in residential interiors for eight years. The studio has already completed a renovation project in Brisbane. The drive from the Gold Coast to most Brisbane suburbs takes under an hour. Distance is not the obstacle it first appears to be. This page explains why.

It is written for people planning a substantial project. A whole home renovation in Ascot. A new build brief at Hamilton. A Teneriffe woolstore apartment that needs to feel like a home rather than a display suite. Or a Bulimba Queenslander whose back half has reached the end of its patience. Below you will find what the service includes for Brisbane clients, how a project runs and how fees are structured. You will also find the questions we think you should put to any interior designer before you sign with one, including us.

Brisbane work you can ask us about

Plenty of studios list Brisbane on a service area page and hope for the best. We prefer proof. Luxxe Interiors has a completed Brisbane renovation in its portfolio. It was delivered with the same site visits, documentation and styling as any project close to the studio. Ask about it in a consultation and Tammy will walk you through what was done and how the logistics worked.

That project sits alongside Casa Laguna, Aria Penthouse and Villa Oceana, a renovation on Sovereign Island, and a new build at Carrara. The studio has also delivered work much further from home. There is a build at Lindfield on Sydney's upper North Shore and a home at Blakehurst in the city's south. There is also a project in Mackay, more than 900 kilometres up the coast. There is more detail on the NSW projects on our interior designer Sydney page.

The point for a Brisbane reader is simple. The process does not depend on the project being around the corner. Brisbane is closer than almost anything else the studio has taken on. If you want unfiltered feedback before you call, client reviews are on hipages.

Full service, with real site visits

Interstate and online studios often serve Brisbane through e-design packages. You receive a concept board and a shopping list. The rest is up to you. That is not what this is. For an interior designer Brisbane is close enough for a full service engagement. The designer is on site when the project needs her there.

In practice, site presence clusters around a few moments. The first consultation and measure-up. Builder walk-throughs at the milestones where drawings meet reality, such as cabinetry checks before carcasses are ordered. Delivery and styling days at the end. Between those visits, the work happens in the studio, wherever the studio sits: concept development, selections, drafting, supplier coordination. You review progress through 3D renders and virtual reality walkthroughs. Decisions get made while looking at your actual rooms rather than a mood board and crossed fingers.

This is the same model used for Gold Coast projects twenty minutes from the studio. The M1 does not change it.

What we design

Luxxe Interiors is a residential studio, so the diary stays focused on homes. For Brisbane clients the service list is the same as it is on the Gold Coast:

• Full home interior design, from spatial planning through to final styling
• Kitchen, bathroom and laundry design, resolved down to drawer internals
• Home cinema and bar design
• Home renovations, including character homes
• Collaboration on new builds alongside your architect and builder
• Drafting, so your builder prices from documents rather than conversations
• 3D renders and virtual reality walkthroughs before anything is ordered
• Decoration: furniture, window treatments, lighting, art and objects

The service is at its best when the studio is engaged from early design through to decoration. Choices made in the first fortnight echo all the way to the styling day. Single space projects are welcome too. A kitchen that no longer works, a bathroom and laundry pair, a cinema room that has been "next year's job" for five years.

One note on the renders and walkthroughs, because for Brisbane clients they carry extra weight. When part of the design conversation happens over distance, a VR walkthrough stops being a novelty. It becomes the approval tool. You stand in your future kitchen at eye height. You check the bench clearances and the sightline from the sink, then sign off knowing what you are getting. Changes cost almost nothing on screen. They cost a great deal once the stone is cut.

Designing for Brisbane homes

Brisbane housing has its own logic, and it punishes copy-paste design. Much of the inner north and inner east is pre-1947 housing under the city's traditional building character rules. A renovation often has to keep the street-facing form while everything behind it changes. Queenslanders bring VJ walls, high ceilings, timber floors on stumps, and a breeze path you interrupt at your peril. The subtropical climate has opinions too. Rooms need deep shade and cross ventilation, and materials have to cope with humidity. A palette that looks refined in a southern showroom can look flat under hard Queensland light. We design for how these houses actually behave through a February afternoon, not how they photograph in June.

Most of the substantial briefs come from the river suburbs. Each pocket has its own housing stock.

Ascot and Hamilton hold the grand end: federation homes and ambitious rebuilds on generous blocks around the racecourse and Hamilton Hill. The gardens are meant to be admired from a verandah. Appetite for Hamptons interiors runs strong here. The look suits these houses when it is done with restraint rather than a catalogue. Our Hamptons style interior design page shows how the studio approaches it.

New Farm mixes workers' cottages, art deco flats and new riverfront apartments on tight blocks. Design work here is usually about borrowed light, clever storage and making a small footprint live large.

Teneriffe is the woolstores: brick walls, hardwood columns and ceiling heights most new towers can only envy. The job is warmth and acoustics, and furniture with enough scale to hold its own in the volume. Apartment work is familiar ground for the studio. Aria Penthouse is in the portfolio. The lessons from it carry straight into the woolstores and the New Farm riverfront.

Bulimba runs to family Queenslanders off Oxford Street. The briefs usually ask for the same thing in different words: open the back of the house to the river breeze without gutting the character at the front.

If your suburb is not named above, that changes nothing. These are simply the streets where this kind of project tends to live.

How a project runs

Every project starts with a consultation, on site for Brisbane work. We walk the house, define the brief, and talk about budget early and honestly. A design you cannot afford to build is a folder of expensive paper. From there the process runs in stages.

1. Concept. Spatial planning, the look and feel, and a materials direction. This is where the big moves are decided: walls, layouts, how the rooms relate.

2. Design development. The concept becomes specific. 3D renders and a VR walkthrough let you test the spaces and request changes while changes are cheap.

3. Documentation. Drafting, drawings, schedules and specifications your builder can price line by line. Every tile, tap and handle identified, so nothing is decided on the fly in a dusty hallway.

4. Procurement and build support. Orders placed, lead times managed, builder queries answered, and site checks at the moments that matter.

5. Styling. Furniture, window treatments, lighting, art. The layer that makes a finished build feel like your home rather than a handover.

On timing, honesty beats optimism. A single room can move through design in a matter of weeks. A whole home takes months before a builder should price it. Furniture lead times on custom pieces can run longer than the joinery. The most expensive schedule is the one that starts construction before the thinking is finished. We will always tell you the real timeline rather than the flattering one. If there is a date that matters, a baby due, a Christmas you refuse to spend in a rental, say so at the first meeting. The program gets built around it.

How fees work

Be wary of any interior designer who quotes a substantial project before seeing the house. Be equally wary of one who cannot explain their model in plain language. Here is ours.

Australian studios generally charge one of three ways: by the hour, as a fixed fee for a defined scope, or as a percentage of the build cost. Hourly suits small advisory jobs but makes budgeting nervous, because the meter is always running. Percentage models can reward a bigger build cost, which is a strange incentive. For residential projects we quote a fixed design fee for a defined scope after the initial consultation. You know the cost of the design phase before you commit to it. Product and construction budgets stay separate and stay yours. The documentation exists to protect them. Builders price accurately from resolved drawings. That is how variations get squeezed out of a project before they are invented on site. The initial consultation is the starting point for Brisbane work [CONFIRM: minimum engagement figure].

Whoever you engage, ask three things: what deliverables the fee buys, who owns the drawings, and how trade discounts are treated. Clear answers to those questions tell you most of what you need to know about a studio.

Worth knowing before you renovate in Brisbane

Two numbers are useful context for anyone planning a project this year.

First, the scale of the market you are stepping into. The Australian Bureau of Statistics counted $1.32 billion of residential alterations and additions approved nationally in June 2026 alone, in seasonally adjusted terms (ABS Building Approvals, June 2026). That is one month. It confirms what Brisbane homeowners already suspect: good trades are busy. A project that arrives with loose drawings goes to the back of the queue or gets priced defensively. Resolved documentation is not a luxury in this market. It is how your project competes for a good builder's attention.

Second, how other renovators behave. In the 2023 Houzz & Home Australia study, 94 per cent of renovating homeowners hired professionals, up from 91 per cent in 2020. Kitchens commanded the highest median spend at $30,000. Renovating without professional help is now rare. The money concentrates in exactly the rooms where mistakes are least forgiving. A kitchen error is not a repaint. It is stone, joinery and services in the wrong place.

None of this means every project needs an interior designer. It means the projects that skip design thinking carry more risk than a decade ago, in a busier market, with more capital at stake.

Choosing a Brisbane interior designer

Most people typing luxury interior designer Brisbane into a search bar want the same assurances: that the work is genuinely good, that the process will not consume their year, and that the budget conversation will be honest. Follower counts answer none of that. Here is what does.

Ask to see finished projects rather than concept boards. Renders are a design tool, but completed rooms show whether a studio can carry an idea through trades, lead times and the compromises of a real build. Ask who does the design work. At Luxxe Interiors the answer is Tammy Brazel, the principal designer, and the person who walks your house at the first consultation is the person designing it. Ask how documentation is handled, because the drawings are where a luxury result is actually protected. Loose documentation gets improvised on site, and improvisation at this level of spend is expensive. Finally, ask how the studio talks about money. Any interior designer who avoids the budget conversation until the concept is approved is saving a hard discussion for the worst possible moment.

Judge every Brisbane interior designer against that list, including us. It is a short interview, and it will tell you more than an afternoon of scrolling portfolios.

Beyond Brisbane

Brisbane sits inside the studio's natural range, close enough for the full service. Further afield, the model flexes rather than breaks. Sydney clients have the Lindfield and Blakehurst projects as reference points, and clients in Victoria work with the studio through renders, VR walkthroughs and drafting packages, with travel as the project requires. The interior designer Melbourne page explains that arrangement honestly, because a studio that claims a local office in every capital city is telling you something about its marketing, not its design.

Frequently asked questions

How much does an interior designer cost in Brisbane?

It depends on scope, which is a frustrating answer, so here is the useful version. Brisbane designers typically charge hourly for small advisory work and fixed fees for renovations and new builds, with some studios charging a percentage of build cost on large projects. The fee should buy defined deliverables: concepts, renders, documentation, selections. Luxxe Interiors quotes a fixed design fee for a defined scope after an initial consultation, so the cost is known before the design phase begins. Ask any studio you interview what happens to trade discounts, because the honest ones will answer without flinching.

How do site visits work when the studio is on the Gold Coast?

The drive is under an hour to most of Brisbane, so visits are scheduled where they earn their place: the first consultation and measure-up, milestone checks during the build, and delivery and styling at the end. Between visits, you review the design through 3D renders and VR walkthroughs and reach the studio directly with questions. The studio has run this model as far away as Mackay and Sydney. Brisbane is the easy version of it.

Should I hire an interior designer or an interior decorator?

A decorator works with the finished shell: furniture, fabrics, colour and styling. An interior designer works on the shell itself as well, planning spaces, documenting joinery and finishes, and coordinating with your builder. If walls, wet areas or cabinetry are changing, decoration alone will not get you there; you need design. Luxxe Interiors carries projects across both, from spatial planning through to the final cushion, which avoids the gap where a designed space gets furnished by guesswork.

How long does the design phase take before building starts?

A single room can be designed in weeks. A whole home renovation or new build needs months of design and documentation before a builder should price it, and custom furniture can carry lead times of its own. Start the design conversation well before you want a builder on site. The sequence matters: resolved drawings first, accurate pricing second, construction third. Projects that run the order backwards pay for it in variations.

Can I see the design before I commit to building it?

Yes, and for distance work this is the heart of the service. Every major space can be produced as a 3D render, and a virtual reality walkthrough lets you move through the design at eye height, checking proportions, clearances and sightlines before anything is ordered. Revisions happen on screen, where they cost little. It is a far better place to discover you want the island 300 millimetres longer than during the stone templating.