A Sydney-based design studio is rewriting the rules of modern family living, proving that nursery furniture, child-friendly spaces, and high-end interior design no longer have to speak entirely different languages.
Main Facts
For generations, the arrival of children has been treated as an aesthetic capitulation. New parents are nudged by a pervasive retail market to make a stark, unapologetic choice: maintain a sophisticated, curated home or surrender to the neon-hued, plastic-heavy, and purely utilitarian demands of raising small children.
Enter Nuage Interiors. Founded in Adelaide in 2021 and now operating out of Sydney, this boutique design studio was born from a singular, disruptive premise: a home does not have to sacrifice its soul when a family grows.
Co-founded by married couple Najah Baroudi and Fares Al-Sarawi, Nuage (named after the French word for "cloud") specializes in furniture and home objects that bridge the gap between uncompromising elegance and real-world durability. The brand’s ethos rejects the notion that nursery and family pieces must be hidden away behind closed doors when guests arrive. Instead, Nuage champions a design philosophy where safety, child-friendly scaling, and high-end architectural aesthetics merge seamlessly.
At the heart of this philosophy is their flagship product, the Arca Table Set—a masterclass in minimalist space-saving. Crafted from rich oak veneer, the set features a round table designed with three curved chairs that slide entirely into its frame, collapsing the entire ensemble into a single, clean, sculptural silhouette when not in use. It is furniture designed to serve children first without ever undermining the visual integrity of the adult space it inhabits.
Chronology: The Evolution of Nuage Interiors
The journey of Nuage Interiors is as much a personal evolution for its founders as it is a commercial trajectory.
- Pre-2021 (The Catalyst): While pregnant with her first son, Malik, co-founder Najah Baroudi set out to find a rocking chair that matched the sophisticated, highly curated aesthetic of her home. Everything available on the market fell into two rigid categories: purely practical or aesthetically jarring. The market gap became glaringly obvious: parents were forced to choose between style and function.
- 2021 (The Inception): Frustration transformed into conviction. Najah and her husband, Fares Al-Sarawi, officially founded Nuage Interiors in Adelaide. Combining Najah’s background in media and global travel with Fares’s operational expertise from a career in pharmacy, the couple established a brand built on meticulous curation paired with structural execution.
- 2021–2023 (Refining the Lens): As the family expanded with the arrival of their second son, Hadi, the founders gained real-time, high-stakes focus groups. Malik and Hadi became the studio’s most rigorous product testers, helping Baroudi and Al-Sarawi evaluate what materials, shapes, and structural elements could truly withstand the chaotic, beautiful reality of toddlerhood.
- Present Day (The Sydney Era): Now operating out of Sydney, Nuage Interiors has cultivated a devoted following among design-conscious parents who refuse to compromise their interior standards. The studio continues to expand its footprint, anchored by viral hits like the Arca Table Set and featured widely across contemporary design and lifestyle publications.
Supporting Data & Design Philosophy
The success of Nuage Interiors is underpinned by a strict set of design metrics and operational principles that separate it from mass-market children’s furniture brands.
The Single Filter
Every piece considered by Nuage must pass a singular, uncompromising test: Does this belong in a home I love? This question strips away the novelty often associated with children’s goods. If an object cannot stand on its own merits as a beautiful, modern design piece in a living room, dining room, or bedroom—regardless of whether a child is using it—it does not make the collection.
Materiality and Craftsmanship
Nuage relies heavily on honest, tactile materials that age gracefully. Rather than utilizing cheap laminates or toxic plastics, the studio favors warm oak veneers, soft bouclé textures, and smooth natural finishes. These materials introduce organic warmth into a space while maintaining the structural durability required to survive daily wear and tear, from arts and crafts to snack times.
Space Efficiency Metrics
Modern urban living demands smarter footprints. The Arca Table Set exemplifies this through precise engineering:
- Materials: Premium oak veneer with a smooth natural finish.
- Configuration: One round table paired with three nesting, curved chairs.
- Target Demographic: Children aged 18 months and older.
- Dimensions: 468mm in height by 970mm in diameter, allowing it to seamlessly double as a low-profile living room coffee table when tucked away.
Official Responses and Founder Perspectives
The foundational philosophy of Nuage Interiors is perhaps best understood through the words of its creators, who view their products through the dual lens of professional designers and exhausted, yet design-proud, parents.
Reflecting on the industry-wide pressure placed on expectant parents, Najah Baroudi notes:
"There’s a moment when you’re expecting your first child and the world suggests you choose between a beautiful home and a functional one. We refused that."
For Baroudi and Al-Sarawi, the ultimate compliment from a client isn’t just that a product is durable, but that it feels as though it was always meant to occupy that exact spatial footprint. When a customer remarks that a Nuage piece looks like it has permanently belonged in their meticulously styled living room—while secretly functioning as a child’s play station—Baroudi’s response is immediate: "That’s everything. That’s the whole point."
The division of labor within the company has been vital to maintaining this vision. Baroudi, drawing on years of international travel and exposure to diverse architectural spaces, steers the aesthetic direction, ensuring every piece feels intentional and sophisticated. Al-Sarawi, leveraging his background in pharmacy and operations, ensures that the supply chain, logistics, and structural safety standards meet the rigorous demands of modern commerce and consumer safety laws.
Implications for the Interior Design Industry
The rise of brands like Nuage Interiors signals a broader cultural and economic shift in how we view domestic spaces. For decades, the life cycle of a home was viewed in rigid stages: the pre-child minimalist sanctuary, the chaotic family phase characterized by compromise and clutter, and the empty-nest reclamation.
Nuage’s model challenges this segmented timeline by suggesting that a home can—and should—evolve fluidly without losing its identity.
1. The Death of the "Nursery" Silo
Interior designers are increasingly noticing that modern parents are rejecting hyper-themed, temporary nurseries in favor of "transitional spaces." Nurseries and children’s corners are now expected to feature furniture that can easily graduate into other parts of the home as the child grows older. A nesting table set used for toddler snacks today can easily transition into a sculptural accent table or plant stand tomorrow.
2. Sustainability Through Longevity
In an era of fast furniture and disposable consumerism, multi-functional design serves a vital sustainability purpose. When furniture is designed to be aesthetically timeless and functionally adaptable, it avoids the landfill fate common to cheap plastic toys and low-quality children’s furniture. Parents keep these pieces longer, pass them down through siblings, or repurpose them for entirely different rooms.
3. Psychological Impact on Parents
The psychological toll of domestic clutter on parents—particularly mothers—is well-documented. Walking into a home overrun by primary-colored, visually jarring children’s items can induce a sense of lost autonomy. By offering pieces that respect adult aesthetic sensibilities, studios like Nuage help parents maintain a sense of self and sanctuary within their own four walls.
Studio Visit: The Arca Table Set
As part of Roomhints’ weekly Studio Visit series—stepping inside the world of individual makers and highlighting a single piece worth specifying—we spotlight Nuage Interiors’ crowning achievement.
The Arca Table Set is more than just a piece of children’s furniture; it is an exercise in spatial alchemy. By engineering chairs that disappear entirely into the perimeter of the table, Nuage has solved one of modern interior design’s oldest vexations: how to accommodate children’s gear without permanently altering a room’s aesthetic layout.
With its rounded edges, child-safe natural finishes, and sophisticated oak veneer, it invites children to sit, draw, read, and snack. Yet, to an unsuspecting dinner guest walking into a living room where the set doubles as a sleek coffee table, its dual identity remains entirely invisible.
And in that invisibility lies the ultimate triumph of modern family design: functionality that works hard, beauty that stands out, and a home that never has to change who it is just because a family is growing.
To explore the collection or shop the Arca Table Set, visit nuageinteriors.com or follow the studio on Instagram at @nuage__interiors.
