Most bedrooms are designed for morning. This one was designed for eleven at night.
The client, a surgeon in Milan who works irregular hours and sleeps when she can, asked for a room that would not fight her schedule. Studio Noctis took that literally and built the space around low light. The headboard wall is clad in bookmatched American walnut, run vertically in wide leaves so the figure reads as one continuous sheet across five metres. The timber is oiled rather than lacquered, which kills reflection and lets the grain absorb whatever light reaches it.
The bed is upholstered in oxblood aniline leather with a wrapped, slightly reclined headboard and exposed dark steel legs. It was made in Brianza to the studio’s drawings. Bedding is deliberately plain: white cotton, a taupe throw, one houndstooth cushion. The studio’s rule was that nothing on the bed should compete with the leather.
Two black cone pendants hang on long cords either side, hard against the walnut. They are the only fixed light source at the head of the bed; there are no lamps and no nightstands. A single terrazzo drum table on the right carries a stack of books. On the left, a bent-plywood bench with a leather sling holds journals and sits at the foot of the bed where a blanket box would normally go.
Above the headboard, a large black-and-white print of Midtown Manhattan seen from above provides the only cool tone in the room and the only image. Its frame is thin black steel, set flush.
The floor is large-format grey porcelain, laid with minimal joints, softened by a pale grey rug that runs under the foot of the bed and stops short of the walnut wall. That gap is intentional: the studio wanted the timber to meet the hard floor, not the textile.
A recessed linear diffuser and a shadow-gap detail keep the ceiling free of fittings. During the day the room reads as brown and grey; at night, under the two cones, it goes almost monochrome. The jury praised the discipline of the material list — four materials, no accents — and the confidence of leaving the second side of the bed without a table.
Studio Noctis is a three-person practice based in Milan, founded in 2018 by Marco Deleddu after a decade in furniture design. The studio works almost entirely in private residences and has a stated preference for dark timbers, which it treats as a structural decision rather than a finish. Deleddu draws every joinery detail himself and works with a single cabinetmaker in Lissone. The office does not take on projects with more than four rooms. Deleddu describes the studio's output as furniture-led, and most projects begin with a piece rather than a plan. Two of the three staff are trained upholsterers. The practice has never worked outside Lombardy.