A Saudi couple, an interior designer and his architect wife, have converted their home into an exhibition for their innovative interior design ideas with a touch of Saudi heritage. Osama Abdul Latif and Taghrid have invited clients to view the unique and beautiful patterns in interior decoration and furnishing displayed so that the clients might choose the designs they prefer.

Abdul Latif told Arab News that he had had the idea of novel furniture designs for quite some time but only began implementing them when his wife began to encourage him.

“A client is reassured when he sees uniquely designed furniture in its real size and dimensions and in a normal home environment,” he said.

He claims that unlike other designers his works are suited to the Saudi environment because he understands fully the tastes of Saudis and how they would like their houses to be decorated.

Abdul Latif said the experience gained by him and his wife through visits to many countries has affirmed their conviction that only Saudi designers and engineers are the right people to understand the taste of a Saudi consumer.

“I do not doubt that we are the only manufacturers of internationally recognized local designs,” Abdul Latif said. “What distinguishes our work from other designers is that we are driven by Saudi ideas executed by Saudi workers while 80 percent of other designers are non-Saudis who are interested only in copying foreign models without any innovative local touch,” he added.

His wife Taghrid stressed the importance of the interior decorator to understand the tastes, needs and personality of each Saudi client. “After carefully designing, we set up everything including plaster work, furniture, fabric and other accessories which we import exclusively for our clients if they are not available locally.”

She added that Saudi women have proved their talent in the field of interior design. “It is, apparently, because a Saudi woman alone can understand the significance of every inch in the interior of her house better than a man.”

The couple are artistic but they also stressed the need for collecting fees in advance. They said many clients did not care to make the final settlement of their accounts and left the last installment of fees unpaid. “I don’t think that it is because they do not have the money but it is because people do not care for other people’s rights,” she said.

However, they believed that their insistence on quality made more people seek their designs. “Orders for work are coming even from outside Jeddah,” she said. “The fact that we receive orders for interior design from other countries affirms that Saudi designers and architects are in great demand outside the Kingdom,” she said.