Mary Maldé

Designing homes that feel instinctively right

My work is grounded in a deep interest in how we respond to the places we live in — beyond what we see.

Early in my career, I relied on instinct and intuition when working with colour and design, but I began to notice that a space could look resolved, yet not feel quite right to those who lived there.

Understanding colour more deeply

This led me to study colour and design psychology more deeply.

While I had always understood the emotional impact of colour from my own experience — what felt cocooning, uplifting or unsettling — this gave me a framework for understanding those responses more deeply and applying that knowledge to design.

More importantly, it helped me to set aside my own strong innate affinities and preferences, and to recognise that what feels instinctively right to me may feel entirely different to someone else. As a designer, my role isn't to impose my own preferences, but to understand the broader patterns in what feels right to each client — then bring my eye, experience and judgement to creating something considered, coherent and distinctly personal to them.

The foundation of Earth States®

From this, I developed Earth States® — a philosophy and methodology that brings together formal study, observation and practical experience to understand the relationship between people and place.

When something begins to shift

Perhaps your home has stopped working as well as it once did. Your needs have changed, you're planning a significant renovation, or you simply sense that it's time for something different.

You may already know what isn't working. You may even have a sense of what feels right, without yet being able to articulate exactly what that is or why.

It's a point many of my clients reach — and often where our work together begins.

Shaping what comes next

My role is to understand the broader patterns in what feels right to you, then bring colour and all the other elements of a space together in a way that is considered, expressive and personal.

A holistic way of designing

I approach each home as a whole.

Colour and other elements of a space are never considered in isolation, but in relation to one another and to the people who inhabit the place.

Influence & perspective

I trained in residential interior design at the KLC School of Design and have since specialised in Advanced Applied Colour & Design Psychology with Karen Haller FRSA, alongside wider study of colour and design psychology and Biophilic Design. I am also a member of the British Institute of Interior Design.

Time spent in natural, elemental environments continues to influence how I think about home — not as something prescribed by a particular style, but as a place to be experienced and lived in over time.

The aim, however, is simple:

To design residential interiors so that they feel instinctively right and unmistakably yours.