Yuliia Demydiuk
Interior Designer & Home Editor
The Beginning
I grew up in Lviv, a city where cobblestone courtyards, Austro-Hungarian facades, and quiet interior gardens taught me that a home is never just four walls—it's layers of light, texture, and memory stacked over time. Wandering through my grandmother's old apartment as a child, I was fascinated by how a single room could feel completely different depending on where the sunlight fell.
My mother restored antique furniture out of a small workshop behind our house, and I spent afternoons sanding down old chairs and mixing stains, learning that beauty often hides under a layer of dust and just needs patience to uncover. That hands-on relationship with materials—wood, linen, plaster—has stayed with me ever since.
At university I studied interior architecture, but the real education happened later: helping friends turn cramped rental apartments into spaces that actually felt like home, on tiny budgets and even tinier timelines. Those early projects taught me more about real-life design constraints than any lecture hall ever could.
That's the thread running through everything I do now: good design isn't about perfection or expensive resources—it's about paying attention to how people actually live, and shaping a space around that truth.
Education & Journey
Lviv National Academy of Arts, Interior Architecture
Studied interior architecture in Lviv, Ukraine. My diploma project focused on adapting small Soviet-era apartments for modern family life—reworking cramped kitchens and awkward layouts without losing the character of the original building. That early focus on working within real constraints, not idealized blank slates, shaped everything that followed.
Studio Internship, Warsaw
Spent a semester with a small residential studio in Warsaw, assisting on renovation projects. Learned to read a room before touching it—how light moves through the day, where people naturally gather, what a family actually needs versus what looks good in a photo.
Junior Designer, Kyiv Design Studio
Worked on residential renovations across Kyiv, from studio apartments to family homes. Spent countless mornings on-site with contractors, learning the gap between a beautiful drawing and a beautiful, buildable space. This is where I learned to design with budgets and timelines in mind, not against them.
Lead Designer, Residential Projects
Started leading my own residential projects, developing a style rooted in warmth, natural materials, and livability over trend-chasing. Clients began seeking me out specifically because they wanted homes that felt personal and lived-in, not staged.
Independent Practice
Relocated and established an independent design practice, taking on a small number of residential projects each year to give each one the attention it deserves. Working independently lets me stay close to every client relationship and every material decision.
Founded Wallnura
Launched Wallnura as a place to share the ideas, mistakes, and small discoveries that don't fit into a client project—real budgets, real rooms, real before-and-afters. The blog has become a space to connect with readers who want their homes to feel more like themselves.
Why Wallnura
After years of client work, I kept noticing the same thing: people felt intimidated by their own homes. They'd apologize for not knowing the "right" style, or put off small changes because they assumed good design required a big budget and a professional on speed dial.
But the truth is, most of what makes a space feel good isn't expensive—it's intentional. A well-placed lamp, the right rug size, furniture arranged for how you actually move through a room. These are learnable, observable things, not secrets locked behind a design degree.
I started Wallnura because I wanted a place that explains the "why" behind a good room, not just the "what"—and that respects readers enough to trust their own eye once they know what to look for.
The name comes from "wall" and "nura," a nod to light finding its way onto a surface—because for me, every room starts with paying attention to how light and space actually behave, long before any furniture comes in.
Through Wallnura, I share real rooms, real budgets, and the reasoning behind every decision—including the ones that didn't work. My hope is that readers leave with more confidence in their own instincts, not just a longer wish list.
Design Philosophy
"A room doesn't need to impress anyone. It just needs to work quietly, every single day, for the people who actually live in it."
Simplicity
Restraint is not deprivation—it's clarity. By removing what's unnecessary, we make room for what matters. Every element should earn its place through function, beauty, or meaning.
Functionality
Spaces should support the lives actually lived in them, not aspirational versions of those lives. Good design accommodates reality—morning chaos, work calls, lazy Sundays—not just styled moments.
Timelessness
Trends fade; principles endure. By focusing on proportion, light, material quality, and spatial flow, we create spaces that age gracefully rather than date quickly.
Notable Projects
Lviv Apartment Renovation
A pre-war apartment with beautiful proportions but a chopped-up layout. We opened the kitchen to the living area, restored the original parquet, and kept the palette quiet—plaster walls, linen curtains, brass hardware—so the architecture could stay the focus. The client wanted a home that felt calm after long workdays, not another project demanding attention.
Carpathian Weekend House
A small wooden retreat designed for a family that wanted an escape from city life without losing basic comforts. Timber construction, a wood-burning stove as the heart of the living area, and a material palette pulled straight from the surrounding forest. The house was built to feel warm in winter and completely open to the landscape in summer.
Warsaw Studio Loft
A compact studio for a young professional working from home. The challenge was fitting a proper kitchen, a real workspace, and a comfortable sleeping area into one room without it feeling crowded. A built-in daybed, a fold-away desk, and careful lighting zoning let the same 52 square meters do three jobs well.
Family Home Refresh
A full refresh for a family with two young children, focused on durability as much as beauty—washable finishes, rounded furniture edges, and storage that could keep up with daily chaos. The brief was simple: it needed to look good in photos and survive an actual Tuesday morning with kids getting ready for school.
Home Office Corner
Not every project needs to be a full renovation. This was a single-corner consultation for a reader who wanted a proper home office carved out of an awkward hallway nook—proof that thoughtful design scales down just as well as it scales up.
Let's Work Together
If you're considering a residential project and value thoughtful, timeless design, I'd love to hear from you. I take on a limited number of projects each year to ensure each receives the attention it deserves.
Get in Touch