Our Self-Build Story: Designing Your Dream Home, Your Way

Studio 31 founder and interior designer Robert Glynn has made a name for himself by doing what many consider the impossible: taking the stress out of the design process. It’s a reassuring promise in a profession that so often involves navigating deeply personal tastes, emotional attachments and the high expectations that come with reshaping someone else’s home. But that theory, as it happens, was most rigorously tested when applied to his home. When the time came to design and build his own house, Robert found himself on the other side of the equation – grappling with the same decisions, doubts, and emotional investments he so often helps his clients manage. Without the professional distance he usually relies on, every choice felt more loaded, every detail more personal, from where the sun lands in the morning to where coats will inevitably be dropped at the end of the day carried weight. For Robert and his partner Amanda Lyons, that weight was felt keenly throughout the creation of their modern black barn in Rolestown, north Co Dublin.