Zuretti Design
| Founded by Francois Zuretti in Geneva in 1987, on an introduction from yacht broker George Nicholson, after twelve years designing interiors first at the Paris firm Triad Condas and then for nine years for the King of Morocco on royal residences and parliament buildings | |
| Moved the whole studio from Geneva to Nice in 2001, and opened a second studio in the Dubai Design District in 2022 | |
| First yacht interior was Eco, a 75 metre Blohm+Voss delivered in 1991 with an exterior by Martin Francis, and still afloat today under the name Zeus | |
| Long running relationship with Benetti opens with the Golden Bay series, seven yachts sharing a 50 metre hull from 1996, then Ambrosia in 2006 and the Classic, Tradition and Vision series, continuing to the 85 metre Project Life gigayacht due around 2030 | |
| Interiors for three of the largest yachts Lurssen has built: Amadea (106m, 2017), Crescent (about 135m, 2018, reportedly a 600 million dollar build, the studio's biggest project) and Scheherazade (140m, 2020) | |
| Designed Symphony, a 101.5 metre Feadship delivered in 2015 for LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault and briefly the largest yacht ever built in the Netherlands, developed in collaboration with the architect Peter Marino | |
| Won ShowBoats International awards across two decades for Eco, Ambrosia II, Lady Lola, Linda Lou and Ambrosia III, then received Boat International's Design and Innovation Awards Lifetime Achievement Award in February 2023 | |
| Now led day to day by president and managing director Sebastien Gey, once described in trade profiles as Zuretti's assistant, with Francois's son Matthieu Zuretti on the board handling procurement | |
| Reported scale is inconsistent between sources: the studio's own site cites 'over 50 custom motor yachts', while Boat International's award profile credits Francois Zuretti with interiors on 'approximately 200' yachts across his career; staff counts likewise range from about 30 in earlier profiles to close to 50 in a French corporate filing | |
| Amadea and Scheherazade were both later seized by government authorities, Amadea by Fiji and US agencies in 2022 amid a case naming the sanctioned Russian businessman Suleiman Kerimov, and Scheherazade by Italian authorities the same year over reported links to the Russian state, unrelated to Zuretti's design work |
The Nice Studio Behind The Name
Zuretti began his design career in 1975 at Triad Condas, a Paris firm that fitted out Middle Eastern palace interiors, then spent nine years working directly for the King of Morocco on royal residences and parliament buildings. The introduction that took him into yachting came from the broker George Nicholson, and in 1987 Zuretti opened his own studio, Zuretti Interior Design, in Geneva. His first yacht interior was Eco, a 75 metre Blohm+Voss motor yacht with an exterior by Martin Francis, delivered in 1991 and still sailing today under the name Zeus. That single project, arriving four years after the studio opened, set the pattern the firm has followed since: a designer who works almost exclusively on interiors, brought in alongside an independent exterior or naval architecture house rather than drawing the whole yacht himself.
In 2001 Zuretti relocated the entire studio from Geneva to Nice, a move driven by proximity to Riviera clients and, by his own account, a wish to trade on his French identity rather than a Swiss address. The following two decades brought a run of large projects rather than a single turning point: Benetti's Golden Bay series from 1996, Ambrosia in 2006 and a growing list of Lurssen and Feadship commissions through the 2010s. In February 2023 Boat International gave Zuretti its Design and Innovation Awards Lifetime Achievement Award, crediting him with interiors on roughly 200 yachts across a three decade career and describing a designer who, despite that body of work, has kept a notably low public profile outside yachting circles.
What The Studio Actually Does And Who Runs It
The studio's own site describes three service lines: yacht interiors, private residences and the visualisation and modelling work, scale models, 3D renders, virtual tours, that support both. Unlike naval architecture or exterior specialists, Zuretti never designs a hull or a profile; every credited project pairs the studio with an outside exterior designer, Martin Francis on Eco, Stefano Natucci on the Benetti Golden Bay and Ambrosia lines, Tim Heywood on Symphony, Espen Oeino on Crescent and Scheherazade. The firm keeps design, drafting, CGI and project management in house rather than outsourcing, and runs a roughly 150 square metre materials library of finishes and fabrics at its Nice headquarters. A second studio opened in the Dubai Design District in 2022, positioned, per the firm, at the crossing point of Western and Middle Eastern clients.
Leadership has shifted since the studio's early years. Sebastien Gey, once described in trade profiles as Francois Zuretti's assistant, now holds the title of president and managing director of Zuretti Design, and Matthieu Zuretti, Francois's son, sits on the board with responsibility for procurement. Francois Zuretti's name still carries the studio's design authority in public: Gey was quoted describing the concept behind Benetti's Project Life in 2025 as trying to soften the boundaries between interior and exterior, to create the mood of being inside a cocoon, while press materials continue to credit Francois personally as the project's designer. Reported staff size does not agree between sources: earlier trade profiles put the team at around 30, while a French corporate filing lists close to 50 employees.
A Zuretti interior reads as old world superyacht grandeur rather than gallery minimalism, the work of a Riviera studio that has spent almost forty years dressing some of the biggest hulls Lurssen, Benetti and Feadship have ever launched.
The Delivered Fleet
The fleet opens with Eco in 1991 and runs through Benetti's Golden Bay series, seven yachts sharing a 50 metre hull built from 1996, and Ambrosia, a 65 metre diesel-electric Benetti delivered in 2006 whose art deco interior won Best Megayacht at the Christofle Asia Boating Awards in 2007. Zuretti has since designed Benetti's Classic, Tradition and Vision series more broadly, work the yard credits to a long history with the studio that predates most of its current design roster. In 2015 Feadship delivered Symphony, at 101.5 metres briefly the longest yacht ever built in the Netherlands, for LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault, with Zuretti developing the interior in collaboration with the architect Peter Marino.
The largest commissions have come from Lurssen. Amadea, a 106 metre delivered in 2017, Crescent, at roughly 135 metres the studio's biggest project and reported to have cost its owner about 600 million dollars, delivered in 2018 with an Espen Oeino exterior, and Scheherazade, a 140 metre delivered in 2020, also with an Espen Oeino exterior, rank among the largest yachts afloat. Benetti's Project Life, an 85 metre gigayacht revealed at the 2025 Palm Beach International Boat Show and due for delivery around 2030, pairs Zuretti with Oeino for the first time on a Benetti hull and stands as the studio's next major flagship.
What A Commission Actually Costs
Neither zuretti.com nor any shipyard or trade profile discloses a day rate, fixed fee or percentage commission for the studio's interior work. That silence is typical of a designer who works mostly through the yard rather than being hired directly by an individual buyer: on a semi-custom platform such as Benetti's Golden Bay or Classic series, the shipyard commissions the interior designer as part of building the model, so a buyer selects a Zuretti designed hull rather than negotiating his fee separately. On full-custom projects such as Crescent or Scheherazade, the interior design contract would ordinarily sit between owner or yard and studio, agreed per project rather than published anywhere.
General industry cost guides, not specific to Zuretti, put design and project management fees on highly customised superyachts at roughly 10 to 25 percent of build cost, rising toward 25 to 30 percent on the most bespoke work, according to yacht design cost surveys published by Ocean Independence and DRAFTXL. The one concrete figure available is a project total rather than a design fee: Crescent's construction was reported at about 600 million dollars, among the most expensive yachts ever built, though that number covers the entire vessel and says nothing about what the interior design contract itself was worth.
How Zuretti Compares To The Field
Where a studio like Achille Salvagni Architetti or Nuvolari Lenard is known for a recognisable aesthetic carried across many owners, Zuretti's work is more often described by trade press in terms of period and material, art deco on Ambrosia, traditional panelling and marble on Amadea, than by a single visual signature. That reads as a deliberate choice: Boat International's award profile praised his attentiveness to the most minute details and great respect for the work of artisans rather than any recurring motif, and the studio's own language talks about matching an owner's brief rather than imposing a house style. The tradeoff is a body of work that looks less immediately identifiable at a glance than some competitors, but one built on unusually long relationships with individual yards.
That loyalty is now being tested. Benetti, the yard most associated with Zuretti across three decades, announced in the mid 2020s that it was bringing in first time collaborators including Espen Oeino, the designer Igor Lobanov and Valentina Zannier, formerly of Nuvolari Lenard, with group chair Giovanna Vitelli framing the move as a need to expand the brand's collaborations with the best designers in the world. Zuretti's own reveal for Benetti's Project Life pairs him with Oeino rather than displacing him, so the studio is being added to rather than dropped, but the shift shows a yard that once ran heavily on a single interior designer now deliberately diversifying its roster.
Where The Limits Are
The clearest gap is fee transparency: with no published rate anywhere, an owner has no benchmark before a first conversation, and even the studio's basic scale is inconsistent. Zuretti's own site says the practice has designed over 50 custom motor yachts, while Boat International's award profile credits the studio with interiors on approximately 200 yachts across Francois Zuretti's career, and neither source resolves the gap. Staff counts disagree the same way, roughly 30 people in earlier trade profiles against nearly 50 in a French corporate filing. Independent owner testimony is thin: the closest thing to a client endorsement, the description of Zuretti as the god of interior design, is attributed by Benetti's own design pages only to a Benetti yacht lover and long-time client, unnamed, which reads as builder supplied rather than independently sourced.
A separate and more unusual limitation is public association. Amadea, a 106 metre Lurssen Zuretti dressed in 2017, was seized by Fiji and US authorities in 2022 and later sold at auction amid a US Justice Department case alleging its declared owner was a proxy for the sanctioned Russian businessman Suleiman Kerimov. Scheherazade, a 140 metre delivered in 2020, was seized by Italian authorities the same year over its links, according to US and Italian investigators, to the Russian government, with reporting naming Vladimir Putin as the suspected beneficial owner behind a declared proxy. Neither seizure implicates Zuretti's design work itself, which predates and is unrelated to that reporting, but it means two of the studio's most photographed interiors are now better known for a legal dispute than for the design that went into them.
Where The Studio Is Headed
Project Life, an 85 metre steel and aluminium Benetti unveiled at the 2025 Palm Beach International Boat Show, is the studio's most visible current commission and its first pairing with exterior designer Espen Oeino on a Benetti hull. Gey described the interior brief as trying to blur the line between inside and outside, aiming for the mood of being inside a cocoon, with construction due to begin in September 2025 and delivery scheduled for around 2030, a build timeline that will keep the project in the trade press for years before it ever reaches water.
Alongside that, the Dubai Design District studio opened in 2022 gives the firm a second base aimed at Middle Eastern and Asian clients without moving the Nice headquarters, which keeps its 150 square metre materials library and in-house drafting and CGI teams. Francois Zuretti's February 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award suggests an industry treating his active career as substantially complete even as his name stays attached to new projects, a transition mirrored in the studio's own management, where Gey now holds the president's title and Matthieu Zuretti sits on the board. What comes after Project Life is not yet public, but the pattern of the last decade, one or two flagship scale commissions running years apart alongside a long tail of smaller Benetti semi-custom work, looks likely to continue.
Practical detail
| Design fee | Not published by the studio, any shipyard partner or any trade source reviewed. General yacht design cost guides, not specific to Zuretti, put design and project management fees at roughly 10 to 25 percent of build cost on highly customised superyachts, rising toward 25 to 30 percent on the most bespoke projects, per Ocean Independence and DRAFTXL yacht design cost guides. |
|---|---|
| What the studio covers | Full yacht interior design, joinery, furniture, lighting and materials selection, plus private residential interiors and architecture and in-house 3D visualisation, scale models and virtual tours. The studio does not design hulls, exteriors or naval architecture, which is always contracted to a separate house. |
| Studio size and structure | Headquartered in Nice, France, with a second studio in the Dubai Design District opened in 2022. Led day to day by president and managing director Sebastien Gey, with Matthieu Zuretti, Francois Zuretti's son, on the board. Reported staff size ranges from about 30 people in earlier trade profiles to close to 50 in a French corporate filing. |
| Copyright | Not published for yacht commissions in any source reviewed. As with most custom and semi-custom yacht interior contracts, reproduction rights over interior and joinery drawings are set per contract and typically remain with the commissioning yard and owner. |
| Where the work has gone | At least ten named delivered yachts confirmed across four shipyards: Blohm+Voss (Eco, now Zeus), Benetti (the Golden Bay series, Ambrosia, the Classic/Tradition/Vision series, and Project Life due around 2030), Feadship (Symphony) and Lurssen (Amadea, Crescent, Scheherazade). |
What owners and crew report
No independently attributable owner testimony found
The closest thing to a client endorsement is the description of Francois Zuretti as the 'god of interior design', which Benetti's own design-hub page attributes only to 'a Benetti yacht lover and long-time client' without naming them. A separate Boat International feature on the 65 metre Ambrosia identifies that repeat Benetti buyer as Ambrous Young, a four-time Azimut-Benetti owner, but that article itself never quotes Young on Zuretti's work, describing the interior only as 'very traditional' in the reporter's own words. Searches of Boat International, SuperYacht Times, Robb Report and major brokerage and charter listings for Amadea, Crescent, Scheherazade and Symphony turned up yard supplied profiles, awards coverage and news reporting on ownership disputes, but no named owner, captain or broker independently assessing the delivered interior work.
Yotters research desk
What is good, and what to watch
Strong points
- Interiors on some of the largest yachts ever builtAmadea (106m), Crescent (about 135m) and Scheherazade (140m), all delivered by Lurssen within a single decade, are a scale of commission few pure interior studios can claim.
- Three decades of yard loyalty, especially with BenettiFrom the Golden Bay series in 1996 to Project Life due around 2030, a continuous relationship with one yard gives a buyer a design language proven across dozens of hulls rather than a single showcase project.
- Recognition across a long career rather than one momentShowBoats International awards for five separate yachts spanning two decades, capped by Boat International's 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award, point to sustained rather than one-off industry regard.
- In-house model rather than a network of subcontractorsDesign, drafting, CGI and project management stay under one roof at a 150 square metre materials library in Nice, with a second studio in Dubai, rather than being farmed out project by project.
- Succession already underway rather than a single-founder riskSebastien Gey now runs the studio day to day as president and managing director, with Matthieu Zuretti on the board, so a buyer is not betting purely on one aging designer's personal availability.
What to watch
- Fee structure entirely undisclosedNo source, including the studio's own website, publishes a day rate, fixed fee or commission percentage, leaving a prospective owner with no public benchmark before a first conversation.
- The studio's own scale claims disagree with independent pressZuretti's own site cites 'over 50 custom motor yachts' while Boat International's award profile credits 'approximately 200' yacht interiors, and staff counts range from about 30 to close to 50 across different sources, with neither gap resolved anywhere.
- Almost no independently sourced owner testimonyThe one available client epithet, 'god of interior design', comes from Benetti's own design-hub page and names no one, and no named owner, captain or broker commentary on the delivered interiors turned up elsewhere.
- Two flagship interiors are now defined publicly by seizure, not designAmadea and Scheherazade, among the studio's largest and most photographed commissions, were seized by government authorities in 2022 over sanctions and ownership disputes unrelated to Zuretti's work, which now overshadows the design itself in public coverage of both yachts.
Who it is for: An owner building or buying a large full-custom or semi-custom motor yacht through Benetti, Lurssen or Feadship who wants a traditionally opulent, richly finished interior from a studio that has fitted out some of the biggest hulls those yards have ever launched, rather than a boutique practice chasing one signature look.