Dubbed ‘the interiors guru’ by The Sunday Times, Michelle Ogundehin is internationally renowned as a thought-leader and trusted voice on the space between home and wellbeing. Her success is founded on a passionate belief in the power of your home to transform your health and happiness, alongside a multi award-winning tenure as Editor-in-Chief of British ELLE Decoration.
Michelle Ogundehin photographed for Grand Designs
Her philosophy for living well is captured in her best-selling book, Happy Inside: How to Harness the Power of Home for Health and Happiness. Her second book, Healthy by Design: How to Create a Healing Home (to be published 2026/27 by Hay House) is a deeper dive into the holistic benefits of clean, green, toxin-free living. See Books.
Current TV credits include her role as Series Judge on the BBC flagship show Interior Design Masters with host Alan Carr, now in its 7th season. She has also co-hosted six series of Grand Designs: House of the Year alongside Kevin McCloud; been a guest judge on The Great Interior Design Challenge; joined Monty Don on the Chelsea Flower Show; and presented Channel 4’s Inside Out Homes. See Television.
Originally trained as an architect, Michelle is an established and experienced presenter, commentator and consultant who has served on numerous industry and educational juries, speaker panels and advisory boards. She is a Contributing Editor to FT HTSI magazine as well as regularly writing for many other prestigious publications including Dezeen, Vogue Living, The Sunday Times and Femail. She was a Trustee of the V&A for 8 years, and in April 2021 was appointed as a Trustee of London’s Design Museum. In February 2024 she became an Ambassador for Breast Cancer UK (a charity devoted to breast cancer prevention), and was also awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from the University of Brighton, the highest honour it can bestow, in recognition of her outstanding contribution to interiors and wellbeing.
She gained notoriety for her Equal Rights for Design campaign. Backed by Sir James Dyson and Sir Terence Conran, her proposal to change the UK copyright laws with respect to design culminated in new laws being passed in 2016 that made knock-off designer classics illegal. It was an industry game changer.
Architect to Journalist
Trained as an architect at London’s celebrated Bartlett School, Michelle worked in architectural offices in both London and New York, where she lived for almost two years. She began her publishing career on Tate Art Magazine under Tim Marlow (formerly Director of the Royal Academy, now Director of the Design Museum), followed by formative years at Blueprint Magazine with founding editor Deyan Sudjic (previously Editor of Domus, and Director of the Design Museum) rising swiftly to the position of Senior Editor.
She was headhunted by Ilse Crawford to join ELLE Decoration as her Features Director. A year later she was promoted to Deputy Editor under Toni Rogers. Just 12 months on she opened her own creative consultancy, MO:Studio Ltd, shuttling between bases in Los Angeles and London, but maintaining a connection to ELLE Decoration as its Editor-at-Large.
In this period, she also regularly contributed features to The Observer Magazine; penned columns for Esquire and directed shoots for Nova Magazine, alongside writing articles for many other prestigious publications around the world including Arena; Design Week; ELLE; The Evening Standard; The Face; Frank; Hoch Parterre (Zurich); iD; Interiors (New York); The International Design Magazine (New York); Numero (Paris); Scene; Sunday Times Style and Tate Magazine.
Editor to Creative Consultant
She was appointed Editor-in-Chief of ELLE Decoration UK in May 2004. During her 13-year tenure, the magazine rose to its highest ever circulation alongside achieving record revenues. She led the magazine to repeatedly win the coveted Consumer Lifestyle magazine of the year award, as well as achieving the personal accolades of both Lifestyle, and Consumer, Editor of the Year.
Her ELLE Decoration was lauded for its originality and style: from her Editor’s letters to the beauty of the style shoots; the variety of the homes featured, and the breadth and quality of the writing. Think original short stories and thought pieces by well-known authors (Rachel Cusk to Jeanette Winterson), book extracts and provocative articles all seeking to explore what ‘home’ means in the 21st century.
She launched ELLE Decoration Collections in 2008, an annual survey of the best new designs in the world. This was followed in 2012 by ELLE Decoration Country, a bi-annual bookazine celebrating the world’s most beautiful rural homes. Three years later she successfully debuted the ELLE Decoration Style Consultancy, an interior design service aimed at commercial property developers.
She also directed the relaunch of Real Homes magazine, achieving the fastest growing readership in a single year for any consumer magazine, up by 72% to 343,000; and its profitable sale one year later.
Appearing on Newsnight with Kirsty Wark alongside Tom Dixon to discuss the demise of Habitat after its sale to Argos.
Since leaving ELLE Decoration in 2017, some of the brands Michelle has collaborated with through MO:Studio Ltd include The Affordable Art Fair. Arteriors. Benetton. Calligaris. Debenhams. De Longhi. DFS. Dulux. Geberit. Graphenstone. Habitat. Heals. IKEA. Made.com. Magnet Kitchens. Marks & Spencer. Microsoft. Naturalmat. Rated People. Ripples. Ruggable. Sainsburys. Selfridges. SilentNight. Tesco. Very.co.uk. Vitra.
Michelle was born in Manchester, grew up in London, called both the East and West Coasts of America home for a while, and now lives in Kent. She is a self-confessed research nerd, detail queen, lover of books and Basset Hounds, and a clutter-clearing obsessive.