Inside Circus Studio: How One Brighton Designer is Redefining Home
Jo Connolly's award-winning studio transforms spaces with creativity, rigour and an obsessive eye for detail.
# Inside Circus Studio: How One Brighton Designer is Redefining Home
Walking into a well-designed home feels like stepping into someone's confidence made visible. There's a rightness to it—the way light falls, how the space flows, the materials that catch your eye. It's a feeling most of us recognise but struggle to articulate, let alone create ourselves. This is where Circus Studio comes in.
Based in Preston Circus, the award-winning interior design studio has quietly become one of Sussex's most trusted names in residential and commercial design. Led by designer Jo Connolly, the studio works with homeowners and businesses across Brighton, Hove and the wider region, transforming ordinary spaces into considered, beautiful environments that actually work for the way people live. It's a philosophy that's increasingly rare in an industry often dominated by showroom templates and off-the-shelf solutions.
The Kitchen as Character
For most of us, the kitchen has become more than just a place to cook. It's where families gather on weekday mornings, where conversations happen over coffee, where the bones of daily life are visible. That's why Jo approaches kitchen design with the same creative rigour you'd apply to any room that matters—which, in her view, is all of them.
"The kitchen is the heart of the home," reads the studio's website, and it's not marketing speak. When Jo works with clients, she's not asking them to choose between a Shaker-style or a handleless contemporary design. Instead, she's identifying what actually happens in their kitchen, how light moves through the space throughout the day, what materials will wear well alongside their life, and how the design can reflect the personalities of the people living there. A kitchen renovation through Circus Studio might mean completely reimagining the layout, or it might mean a more considered refresh. Either way, every decision is made deliberately.
This approach has earned recognition in the industry. The studio's portfolio reveals spaces that feel both timeless and personal—kitchens where every detail, from material selection to spatial planning, has been considered with visible care. You don't see regrettable design choices in a Circus Studio kitchen, the kind that make you wince after three years. Instead, you see spaces designed to live with, not around.
The Bathroom: Function Meets Joy
If kitchens are about daily rhythm, bathrooms are about something more intimate. A great bathroom design is one of the highest-value investments you can make in a home, yet it's also one of the easiest to get catastrophically wrong. Tiny spaces can feel cramped and poorly lit. Beautiful bathrooms can be uncomfortable to actually use. It's a balance that requires both technical expertise and genuine design instinct.
Jo brings both. Recently shortlisted for Bathroom Designer of the Year at the KBB Awards—a significant honour in the interior design world—she's become one of Sussex's most trusted bathroom designers precisely because she refuses to sacrifice either beauty or functionality. Her approach starts with meticulous material selection and spatial planning that maximises even the smallest footprints. But it goes further. She applies a styling eye that elevates the purely functional into something you actually look forward to stepping into. That might sound like a small thing, but anyone who's had to use a poorly designed bathroom knows it's not.
What's notable is how Circus Studio treats bathrooms with the same design philosophy as every other room. They're not utilitarian afterthoughts. They're spaces with purpose, character and considered detail. In Brighton, where many homes are Victorian terraces or converted period properties, this approach is particularly valuable—it respects architectural context while creating something genuinely modern and personal.
!Circus Studio Brighton and Hove
Beyond the Kitchen and Bath
Yet Circus Studio's reach extends well beyond kitchens and bathrooms. The studio works on living rooms that feel cold and uninviting, bedrooms that never quite come together, open-plan spaces that look stunning on paper but don't actually flow in real life. There are home offices that need to function as both workspace and living area, dining rooms that anchor family life, commercial spaces that communicate brand values before a word is spoken.
This breadth reveals something important about Jo's philosophy: every room in your home tells a story, and good design means telling the right one. That's not a line you'd expect from an interior designer, but it's the kind of thinking that separates studios that arrange furniture from designers who genuinely understand how people inhabit space.
On the commercial side, Circus Studio has designed interiors for independent retailers, hospitality venues, professional studios and office spaces across Brighton and Sussex. The principle is the same. A well-designed commercial space speaks volumes about who you are before customers or clients ever walk through the door. In a city like Brighton, where independent businesses are part of the fabric and identity, this kind of thoughtful commercial design matters—it's part of what makes the city feel distinctive.
The Studio Itself
Located on Preston Circus—itself a characterful Brighton address—Circus Studio operates at the thoughtful end of the design spectrum. This is a studio that takes on projects it cares about, works with clients who understand that good design requires genuine collaboration, and refuses to operate on a factory model of standardised solutions.
Testimonials from clients speak to something beyond professional competence. One couple noted how Jo didn't just deliver a beautiful result but reduced stress throughout the project by inspiring genuine faith in her approach. Another mentioned she came up with ideas "you might never have thought of yourself." These are small phrases, but they suggest a particular kind of designer—one who's genuinely invested in understanding what clients need, even when they can't yet articulate it themselves.
In an industry where many designers operate at scale, where algorithms and trends often drive decisions, there's something refreshing about a studio that remains resolutely focused on craft, care and detail. Circus Studio represents design as a careful, thoughtful discipline rather than a commercial transaction. That philosophy might take longer, and it might be more challenging, but the results speak for themselves.
For anyone in Brighton, Hove or Sussex considering a renovation, refresh or new build, Circus Studio offers something increasingly rare: a designer who genuinely cares about telling your story through your home.
Get in Touch
Circus Studio
1 Preston Circus, Brighton
hello@circus-studio.com
https://www.circus-studio.com/
The studio offers consultations for potential projects and is open to enquiries about residential and commercial design work across Brighton, Hove and Sussex.