HOSPITALITY DESIGN
Trullo
Islington
THE BRIEF
A neighbourhood favourite built to last.
THE RESPONSE
Trullo is where Day Studio started — Lisa Helmanis designed this Islington Italian in 2010, and the studio has returned across multiple phases in the sixteen years since.
THE BRIEF
The interiors share a simplicity and honesty — they are both designed to age well.
Lisa Helmanis on Trullo and Burro
Wallpaper, March 2026
Trullo is where Day Studio started. Lisa Helmanis designed the restaurant interior design for this Islington Italian in 2010. Sixteen years later, it is still full every service, still on best restaurant lists, and the atmospheric, concept-driven interior still looks exactly right — the clearest argument the studio can make for enduring hospitality design.
The ground floor is a converted shop on St Paul’s Road, full-height warehouse windows flooding the room with North London light. The material-led palette is deliberately spare — raw original floorboards, dark bentwood chairs sourced second-hand, deep charcoal banquettes, white tablecloths. A structural column bisects the room; its reflection in the window doubles the space, creating depth the footprint does not possess. Nothing announces itself — and yet the room produces what the Good Food Guide called “warmth with a capital W.” Downstairs, curved booths in low vaults create an immersive dining atmosphere as close to private as a restaurant can feel. The contrast gives Trullo a genuine range of registers under one roof.
The most recent phase — 2025 — added a new bar next door: bespoke bar interior design that holds the same values as the original room while finding its own character. The same material-led thinking, applied to a different brief.
Day Studio’s relationship with Trullo is the model the studio advocates for boutique hospitality interiors: not a single intervention but a long creative conversation. It is also the origin of the collaboration with chef Conor Gadd, which led in 2026 to Burro — a full commission for interior design, brand identity and web, featured in Dezeen and Wallpaper*.
“It’s as if the entire naked brick and “architects white” era somehow passed it by. There are candles on tables, throwing welcoming warm pools into which local couples and families lean intently. The place is never less than fully booked and the atmosphere never less than bustling. Trullo might be the youngest of the classics, but it has seriously old bones. Like some favourite in Paris or Venice, it feels like it’s been there for centuries.”
Tim Hayward, The Financial Times