The designer who made his client cry.
An interview on texture, emotion and a new Mare Studio collection taking shape quietly.
This is behind the wave - a designer Spotlight Series.
On tears, texture, and the art of coming home. Every edition, we sit down with a designer who believes a space should do something to you.
A conversation with Jeroen Machielsen of Studio Hermanides
Jeroen Machielsen founded Studio Hermanides in 2008, after years of working alongside renowned interior designers Jan des Bouvrie and Marcel Wolterinck. Based in Amsterdam, he designs luxury interiors for private residences, offices, holiday homes and yachts, in the Netherlands and beyond. His signature approach, which he describes as Timeless Eclecticism, blends classical elements with a contemporary sensibility: pure materials, a considered colour palette, and spaces that feel both harmonious and genuinely luxurious.
In this series, we speak with interior designers who believe a space can be more than beautiful, that it should do something to you. Today, Jeroen talks about material, feeling, and the finest compliment that fabric and stone can ever receive.
Materials & texture
There is a thread running through all of Jeroen’s work: everything is meant to be touched. Wood, wool, natural stone, bronze and glass — these are the raw materials of his interiors, but it goes beyond a list. It’s about layering. About the way a brushed wooden surface feels different from a polished stone, and how placing the two side by side creates something you can’t quite put into words.
In terms of colour, he gravitates toward deep, greyed greens and dark blues colours that hold their ground without overpowering a room. Lately, though, he finds himself drawn more and more to deep oranges and brick tones. Warm. Earthy. Colours that pull you in.
“Tactility matters to me just as much as appearance. A velvet sofa, a wool plaid, a natural stone with a leather finish, it’s the feeling under your hands that brings a space to life.”
The creative process
His process begins the moment he sits down with a client for the first time. Before any moodboard exists, an image forms in his mind a mood, a direction. From there, he translates it into a colour palette, and from the colours, materials begin to surface naturally. The moodboard grows, breathes, loses things, gains others. He steps back deliberately, returns, looks again.
What drives him most is working alongside the client not designing for them, but with them. Until the image feels right. Not just on paper, but when you’re standing inside it.
Slowing down in a busy world
Travel brings Jeroen peace. Not the act of leaving, but the quality of full presence somewhere. Whether it’s a city or the countryside doesn’t matter, what matters is that rare state of being entirely focused on what surrounds you. Architecture, culture, light. Present.
The interior as emotion
Aesthetics are a given, but they’re not enough. An interior is your safe haven. It’s the place that reflects who you are, that holds you at the end of a long day, that quietly says: here, you can be yourself. That’s not purely aesthetic. That’s emotional.
“The finest compliment I’ve ever received? Tears. That’s such a pure emotion, it really lands. That’s what you do it for.”
Unwinding
When asked about a personal ritual or object that helps him unwind, Jeroen tells with honesty. “Nothing specific, really. I’m not very good at unwinding.” And perhaps that’s precisely where the power of his work lies that he builds that unique home in rich materials for others. In spaces that say: here, you’re allowed to stop for a moment.
Something new is almost ready.
We have been working on it quietly, longer than we expected, and with more care than we planned.
A new collection. In materials you haven’t felt yet. The colours are drawn from the same places that have always inspired us: the dune line in early morning, the way coastal grass catches sideways light. Nothing invented. Everything observed.
We are not ready to show you everything yet. But if you’d like to be among the first to see it in person, come to our showroom in The Hague. We make time for every visit. We’ll show you what we’re making, let you feel things that aren’t on the website yet, and talk about the thinking behind it.
Working from a studio or creative practice? We’d love to come to you instead.
The Softest Beginning.
Every so often, we make something that surprises us.
Not because it is complicated, but because it is so simple, and so right, that we wonder why we did not make it sooner.
The Mare Baby Plaid began with a question: what is the most gentle thing we know how to make?
The answer was this.
A plaid made entirely from natural fibres, the same materials we trust for everything else we make, but chosen with a particular softness in mind. No synthetics. No chemical treatments. Nothing that does not belong near new skin.
It is small enough to hold easily. Light enough to forget it is there. Soft enough that you understand it the moment you touch it.
The Baby Plaid is available now. If you know someone expecting a baby, or if you simply want to give something that was made with extraordinary care, you will find it at mare-studio.nl.
We’ll keep it soft, thoughtful, and worth your time.
Let’s create space for softness and embrace the first light of spring.
Thank you for reading.
With warmth,
Manon & the Mare Studio team