homes that hold you, rather than ask more of you.
where beauty is felt
the thread
Niamh O’ Callaghan
I’ve been drawing and making for as long as I can remember.
But I first understood what a room could hold at thirteen, standing inside Riverstown House, a period home a friend's grandfather had lovingly restored. I remember thinking how a house could carry memory the way a person does, and I've been chasing that feeling ever since.
For years, I lived in what I call borrowed spaces, homes shaped by someone else's decisions, materials and taste. When I couldn't move the walls, I learned to shape the atmosphere instead, drowning out the visual noise of a questionable surface, changing the warmth of a light, emphasising features a building had to offer or concealing what had been lost in translation.
Those small, considered acts taught me that beauty can be felt as well as seen, and that it begins with noticing what's already there.
Each borrowed space taught me how a poorly considered decision shapes the way we live and feel at home, every day.
creative director, 2026
It's the difference between a layout and a design.
A layout tells you where the rooms go. A design asks how you'll live in them. And most of those decisions were made long before I arrived, on a drawing. And I’ve stood on both sides of that drawing.
My design journey began at a drawing board, as an architectural technologist in award-winning practices. From there it carried me into kitchen design, then onto certified project management, which eventually brought me back to Cork, to roll-out the german kitchen architecture at The Elysian in cork city. That work confirmed what my borrowed spaces had already taught me, that atmosphere can soften a room, but so much of how it feels is settled early, in details no one ever sees, the unseen decisions.
But before all that, a quieter thread had already been pulling at me back to my first love. A BFA in painting, a postgraduate in arts administration, and work at SFMOMA and the Green on Red Gallery, Dublin.
It's now a fixed part of my practice, every home I shape carries a piece of Irish art or a maker's hand, planned from the very first drawing.
A diploma in interior design let it all meet, the technical, the creative, the emotional, the made-by-hand.
I founded tigh design in 2016 so that the decisions shaping your home are taken, while they're still yours to make.
Not performing for anyone else.
Just quietly, honestly yours.
‘Best Experiential & Emotion-Led Interior Design Studio’
EU Business “Irish Enterprise Award Winner’’ 2026
a clearer path home
a home that feels lived-in, holds your story, and supports the way you live, personal, at ease, and entirely yours.
let’s begin with a quiet conversation.
how we begin...
book a threshold call.
01
choose a time that suits you and answer a few brief questions about your home.
we talk.
02
Fifteen minutes, complimentary: where your home is now, where you'd like it to go, and whether we're the right fit for each other. Nothing to commit to, just a conversation.
your design diagnostic.
03
INinety minutes together over your plans, reading them for how you'll actually live. Complete in itself.
continue, if it feels right.
04
on to the living footprint or the full crafted living experience, with your diagnostic carried forward. If not, you'll leave with a clearer sense of what matters to you, and that's just as valuable.
1% of profits support Cork Simon Community.
because home matters for everyone.