Studio Indigo

An architect's training, applied to boats

Studio Indigo did not start as a yacht design house. Mike Fisher trained as an architect, completed a masters in urban design, and spent his early career designing hospitals, houses, offices and galleries as a commercial architect, before he and Ngila Boyd set up Studio Indigo in 2005 from a loft space overlooking the Thames. The practice grew out of high-end residential work, and boats followed only once satisfied clients started asking for them.

That order matters for how the studio's yacht interiors read. A practice that started in hospitals and houses brings a different set of reference points to a superyacht saloon than a studio trained inside the marine industry from day one, and Studio Indigo's own account of its work leans on exactly that: calm, livable, residentially-minded rooms rather than a maritime style applied for its own sake.

What the studio actually does, and does not, do

Studio Indigo designs interiors. It does not draw a hull, does not style an exterior profile, and does not perform naval architecture, and every documented project in this research confirms that division: a separate firm handles the naval architecture and a separate stylist draws the exterior on every yacht the studio has worked on. The studio's own team, described as around 50 architects, yacht designers, technicians, decorators and project managers, is built for fit-out and decoration, not hull engineering.

That focus is a deliberate trade-off rather than a limitation the studio hides. A practice with no naval-architecture overhead can spend its full attention on how a room actually works: sightlines, materials, acoustics, the practical business of where a family or a crew of guests will actually sit. The cost is that Studio Indigo is never the first design appointment on a new-build; it joins a project after the hull and exterior are usually already fixed.

M's owner's suite moved its bed six inches toward the window and won a world award for it, the kind of change that costs nothing in steel and everything in how a cabin actually feels.

Joy, and the World Superyacht Award that put the studio on the map

Joy is a 70-metre Feadship delivered in 2016, with interiors by Studio Indigo built around the idea that the inside of the yacht should feel like an extension of the spaces outside it. She won the World Superyacht Awards in 2017, and Boat International's own coverage of the yacht highlighted a basketball court and a disco among her more unusual amenities, evidence of an interior brief built for a specific owner's life rather than a generic template.

Joy remains the studio's clearest large-yacht credential: a Feadship, one of the most demanding and best-resourced yards in the industry, choosing an outside interior house rather than its own long-established design partner, De Voogt, for the rooms. For a studio less than a decade old at the time, that commission and the award that followed did more to establish Studio Indigo's standing in the superyacht market than any single piece of marketing could.

Brigadoon, and how many names sit behind one 36-metre hull

Brigadoon is the first hull of Moonen's 36-metre Martinique line, delivered in 2018 as build YN197. Naval architecture came from Diana Yacht Design, exterior styling from Rene van der Velden, the general arrangement layout from Nauta Design, and the interior from Studio Indigo, a four-way credit split across four different firms on a single 36-metre yacht. She won a World Superyacht Award in 2019 and Best in Show at the MYBA Charter Show in Barcelona the same year.

The project is a useful lesson in how crowded a modern yacht's design credits can get, and why asking a yard for a written credit list before assuming who did what matters. Studio Indigo's specific contribution, per the studio's own account, was the interior: a main-deck owner's cabin with panoramic views, a country-style galley, and a layout for ten guests across four cabins, delivered inside a hull and general arrangement that three other named firms had already settled.

Motor Yacht M, and the six inches that won an award

M is a 47-metre Sanlorenzo, with exterior styling by Francesco Paszkowski and interior by Studio Indigo, that won the World Superyacht Awards 2025 in the displacement motor yacht category for vessels 46 metres and above, under 500 gross tons. The judging panel praised what it called calm Scandinavian styling and thoughtful customisations, a phrase that points at the studio's residential training rather than a maritime design language borrowed off the shelf.

The specific change the studio is best known for on this project is small in engineering terms and large in how the room feels: the owner's suite walls on the main deck were repositioned to bring the bed six inches closer to the window, opening a sea view through a fold-down balcony, while an angled wall in the ensuite bathroom allowed a significantly larger shower without giving up floor space elsewhere. M accommodates 12 guests across five en-suite cabins.

How a commission actually runs, alongside a naval architect hired first

Every documented Studio Indigo yacht project in this research followed the same order: the hull, naval architecture and exterior were settled first, by other firms, and Studio Indigo was appointed afterward to design the interior inside that already-fixed envelope. That is the normal sequence for an interior-only practice, but it means the studio's creative freedom is bounded by decisions it had no part in, from the position of structural bulkheads to the shape of the windows it has to work around.

The studio's own description of its process emphasises collaboration rather than sole authorship: on Brigadoon that meant coordinating with Nauta Design's general arrangement, and on M it meant working within Francesco Paszkowski's exterior. A prospective client should read that as a feature rather than a flaw for a specific kind of project, an existing hull that needs its rooms redesigned or a new-build where the yard has already chosen everyone else, but it does mean Studio Indigo is rarely the studio that shapes a yacht's fundamental proportions.

What the fee is, and what a studio like this will not say

Studio Indigo does not publish a fee scale or a day rate, and this research found none independently reported either. Interior-only commissions on a yacht this size are commonly quoted separately from the naval architecture and exterior fee in principle, but no yacht-design cost guide found in this research breaks a total project fee down by discipline in a way that would let a buyer isolate what the interior design specifically cost on Joy, Brigadoon or M.

What can be said with more confidence is the shape of the commercial relationship: the studio is engaged either by the owner directly or by the yard, and its brief begins once the layout is fixed, which in cost terms usually means the interior design fee is negotiated against a known volume of accommodation rather than an open-ended hull. Beyond that, neither the studio, the yards, nor the owners in any of these three projects have disclosed a figure.

Who else competes for the same clients

Studio Indigo sits in a crowded field of interior-only yacht studios that also work across naval architecture and exterior firms rather than owning the whole hull: names like Bannenberg & Rowell, Reymond Langton and Winch Design compete for the same kind of commission, an owner or yard that wants a named interior specialist inside a hull someone else has already engineered. What separates Studio Indigo from several of those rivals is its residential and hospitality background rather than a career built inside the marine industry from the start.

That distinction is the studio's clearest pitch to a prospective client: an owner who wants their yacht's interior to feel like the private houses and hotels the same team designs, rather than a marine-specific aesthetic, has a genuine reason to choose Studio Indigo over a rival with a longer yacht-only pedigree. An owner who wants a specialist steeped only in maritime detailing may reasonably look elsewhere.

What a name like Studio Indigo is worth at resale

None of the three projects in this research disclosed a resale premium tied specifically to the interior design credit, and this is a harder thing to isolate for an interior studio than for a naval architect or an exterior stylist, because a buyer touring a yacht experiences the whole finished result rather than one discipline's contribution in isolation. What is measurable is critical recognition: two World Superyacht Awards eight years apart, on two very different yachts, for two different owners.

For a buyer weighing whether a named interior studio matters at resale, the more useful question is whether the awards and the press coverage they generate translate into broker interest, and this research found no independent data on that specific point. What can be said is that Studio Indigo's work is well enough documented, on the studio's own site and in trade press, that a future buyer or broker can verify exactly who designed a Studio Indigo interior and confirm the credit is genuine.

Who it is for: Owners who already have a hull and an exterior settled and want a London-trained residential and hospitality sensibility applied to the rooms inside it.