Drawing room · function led, beauty followed
Comfort before aesthetics
A room must work before it can be beautiful. Pathways clear, seating welcoming, light in the right places. Aesthetics follow function — never the other way around.
Interior Design Compendium · Established 1976
Live with art that
belongs to your room.
A complimentary advisory service from a 50-year Hampstead gallery. We study your space, your light, your life — then recommend pieces from our own inventory that genuinely fit.
50
Years of advisory
78
Artists represented
£0
For the consultation
Gabrielle du Plooy · The studio approach
Comfort, then function, then beauty.
Zebra One Gallery was opened in July 1976 by Lee du Plooy, Gabrielle's father. Gabrielle took over the gallery twenty-five years ago and has spent that time placing art in homes across Hampstead, Mayfair and Holland Park. Her studio's hierarchy never changes: a room must be comfortable first, functional second, beautiful last. Beauty without function is decoration; beauty after function is design.
The team works with named rules — the 60·30·10 colour ratio, odd-numbered styling in threes and fives and sevens, eye-level hanging at 145cm — not because rules are sacred, but because they make a room read calm rather than considered. Once the discipline is in place, the personality has somewhere to live.
The advisors do not sell what is in fashion. They show what will still feel right when fashion has moved on.
Gabrielle du Plooy · Owner & Director, Zebra One Gallery
The seven rules
Seven principles, fifty years of watching them land.
The rules Gabrielle du Plooy and her team return to on every consultation — named, specific, and tested in real homes. Comfort first, then function, then the careful choreography of colour, scale, light, and time.
Dining room · the anchor sets the room
Every room needs an anchor
A fireplace, a view, a single commanding artwork. Without a focal point, the eye has nowhere to settle and a room feels restless. We hang the anchor first; everything else arranges itself around it.
Study · tonal balance
The 60·30·10 colour rule
60% dominant tone (walls and floors). 30% secondary (upholstery, curtains). 10% accent (cushions, art, accessories). Three quiet ratios that make a room read as composed rather than decorated.
Living room · odd-numbered styling
The 3·5·7 styling rule
Group accessories — vases, books, candles, cushions — in odd numbers. Threes, fives, sevens. The eye reads odd-numbered groupings as natural arrangements, not stiffly arranged ones.
Bedroom hang · placed at eye level
Hang at 145cm
The centre of an artwork sits at roughly 145cm from the floor — eye level for the average adult — regardless of ceiling height or sofa height. Most works hang too high; this single rule fixes it.
Hallway · ambient, task, accent
Layered lighting
Never one source. Combine ambient (overhead), task (reading and desk), and accent (picture lights, spots). A single overhead bulb flattens a room; layers give it depth, warmth, and quiet drama after dark.
Library snug · era against era
Mix old and new
A modern sofa beside an antique console. A contemporary print over a Georgian fireplace. Tension between eras is what gives a home personality — and stops it ageing the moment fashion turns.
And the rules to break
If you love it, it never goes out of style.
No. 01
Wallpaper in a bathroom
It works — provided it sits outside the direct shower spray. Pattern in the most utilitarian room is one of design's quiet pleasures.
No. 02
Bold work in a small room
Counter-intuitive but true: a single large, confident piece in a modest space reads more luxurious than a wall of small, polite ones.
No. 03
Trust the eye over the rule
Rules give a room its discipline. Instinct gives it its soul. The advisor's job is to know when to apply which — and when to let the client overrule both.
See the difference
The same room — drag to compare.
Walls finish a room. Drag the handle to see how a single, considered piece changes the gravity of a space. The proportions, the eye-line, the conversation a chair has with a painting — these are the things a consultation gets right.
Before
After
A Hampstead drawing room before and after a Zebra One Gallery consultation. Furniture and lighting unchanged — only the walls.
On placement
"An artwork doesn't sit on a wall. It sets the temperature of the entire room — the way you walk through it, the way you sit, the quiet of every conversation that happens beside it."
Gabrielle du Plooy, Owner & Director
How we work
Free consultation,
then expert advice.
No guesswork. No pressure. You talk to us about your space — we analyse and recommend work from our real inventory.
Light study · master bedroom
01
Free consultation
Share room photographs, style ideas, and budget. A complimentary, open conversation — no obligation.
02
We analyse
Our curators study light, colour, and scale, then handpick works from the Zebra One collection that truly fit the space.
03
Personalised advice
You receive a shortlist with mockups on your own wall. We explain why each piece works — grounded in design, not opinion.
04
Try & decide
Approve, swap, or request alternatives. Once you are happy, we handle framing, delivery, and installation.
Hallway · Mayfair installation
The inventory
Your shortlist, drawn from the real collection.
No samples. No stock imagery. During your consultation we pull the specific pieces that suit your light, scale, and palette — from over 1,000 catalogued works across 78 artists.
Begin
Tell us about your room.
A 30-minute conversation with a senior advisor. We'll listen first.