Somner Macdonald Architects

Somner Macdonald Architects Award winning Architects specialising in high quality bespoke design. We spend time to get to know our clients and the visions that they have for their homes.

SomnerMacdonaldArchitects operates in Edinburgh & North Berwick

We specialise in high quality residential projects. We successfully transform Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian houses to suit today’s lifestyles. We take care with our design, to allow us to get the most of out each situation, with the least intervention. We strip away the layers that have been added by previous generations, to rev

eal the original forms and features of each building. We consider carefully sustainability. We design to utilise what exists and we select materials thoughtfully and sparingly. We aim to create processes and environments that are simple, straightforward and sublime. We work to deliver quality and good value. We believe in the overall approach where less is more.

We’re Edinburgh based; but great clients take us places. Woodsome Road, London, our third completed project for the same...
15/05/2026

We’re Edinburgh based; but great clients take us places. Woodsome Road, London, our third completed project for the same client, is one of those happy exceptions.

The brief? Transform a dark Victorian terrace hemmed in by a crumbling rear annex into something light, generous and connected to the garden beyond.

Working within a conservation area, we chose a pale Belgian brick that sits quietly alongside the original house; new but completely at home. A concrete string-course and detailing through the brickwork is our nod to the Victorian detailing of the front of the property.

Inside, a large rooflight floods the open plan kitchen and dining space with light. Oak floors, green toned cabinetry and warm timber carry the garden palette inside. Glazed sliding doors dissolve the boundary between inside and out.

Three projects (we are currently working on our fourth). One client. A home that’s grown with her family. That’s the kind of work we love doing; wherever it takes us.

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There’s a brief window on every project, exactly like here in North Berwick; when everything is stripped back and the bu...
11/05/2026

There’s a brief window on every project, exactly like here in North Berwick; when everything is stripped back and the building shows you exactly what it is and what it can be.

A Victorian house in North Berwick, fully stripped back. Bricks from long closed makers. Rough cut joists. A fireplace uncovered in each room. Maker’s marks pressed into clay that’s been hidden behind lath and plaster for over a hundred years.

This is often an often misunderstood step in the design process; reading what’s there, and deciding what to honour.

The renovation and extension is underway here in our St Margaret’s Road project. Watch this space.

01/05/2026

Last night we had the privilege of joining the launch of the CALLUM x Daniel Hopwood Lounge Chair — a truly special collaboration between two of the most distinctive creative minds working today.

Thank you to the wonderful of and of for an evening full of warmth, insight, and genuine inspiration. To be in a room where design is spoken about with such passion and craft is always a reminder of why we love what we do.

A stunning chair born from a meeting of two remarkable visions. We can’t wait to see where this collaboration goes.

Congratulations to you both — it was a genuine pleasure.

Old and new.A Victorian sandstone villa; curved bay windows, covered veranda, the weight of the 19th century in every dr...
27/04/2026

Old and new.

A Victorian sandstone villa; curved bay windows, covered veranda, the weight of the 19th century in every dressed stone, meets a curved glazed pavilion that extends its base like a quiet counterpoint. Corten columns, a sedum roof, glass, that all adds without imposing.

Inside, the same dialogue continues. Terracotta brick underfoot, clay plaster walls, Douglas fir cabinetry; materials that remember something older.

This is what we believe a sensitive addition should do: not mimic, not contrast for contrast’s sake, but attune. To find the underlying logic of a place; its palette, its rhythm, its relationship to light and landscape and enhance the original property.

The Victorian builders understood permanence. We believe that the best contemporary work understands it too, just differently.

The design of our Dunbar clifftop home carries a recurring idea; that the boundary between inside and outside should dis...
24/04/2026

The design of our Dunbar clifftop home carries a recurring idea; that the boundary between inside and outside should dissolve rather than divide.

Herringbone brick runs unbroken from the covered terrace into the kitchen and dining room beyond. The same earthy tone that appears underfoot reappears in the columns: unfinished, oxidised, rooted in the coastal geology of the site. Limed Douglas Fir joinery picks up the muted tones of the pale grasses adorning the clifftop. The sea is not decoration; it is the horizon that every room is organised around.

In form, the curved extension reaches into the garden, its red columns echoing those of the existing house, and its green roof reading as borrowed landscape. Old and new held together by material logic rather than pastiche.

Within the studio we frequently return to a single question: what does it mean to make a building that belongs to its place?

The North Sea doesn’t ask permission. It arrives; grey, looming, relentless and this house is designed to meet it on its...
21/04/2026

The North Sea doesn’t ask permission. It arrives; grey, looming, relentless and this house is designed to meet it on its own terms.

This clifftop property in Dunbar, with primary rooms reoriented to face north toward the Bass Rock and the Firth beyond. The existing house is to be carefully conserved; a new western extension crafted in warming sandstone, timber and terracotta, its facade of deep-set glazing and vertical fins able to open wide on still days or draw close against the haar.

The material palette takes its cues directly from the site — the red sandstone strata of the cliff face, the muted greys of the water, the warmth of the rock at low tide. Inside and outside in constant conversation.

Our approach here has been to create an Architecture that doesn’t compete with landscape, but Architecture that listens to it.

residentialarchitecture

The devil is in the details. Our recently completed renovation of a Category-A apartment in Edinburgh’s New Town is a pr...
25/03/2026

The devil is in the details.
Our recently completed renovation of a Category-A apartment in Edinburgh’s New Town is a prime example of the importance of considered design from the earliest stages of the design process.
From building materials to furniture, at every turn decisions were made carefully and in collaboration with our clients. From clay plaster, Douglas Fir floors. Tadelakt plaster in wet areas, brass ironmongery.
More information on this project can be found on our website. Link in the bio.



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12/02/2026

Final call, for your votes! (Follow the link in our bio)

We couldn’t be happier to have been nominated for this year’s Building of the Year Awards. Our whole house Renovation and Extension at Hermitage Drive, Edinburgh, has been selected under two categories; Houses and Best Applied Product.

To have been selected from thousands of projects from around the globe is an honour. The awards are the largest community driven architecture award, recognising the best published projects during the previous year.





We need you…. To Vote for us! (Follow the link in our bio)We couldn’t be happier to have been nominated for this year’s ...
29/01/2026

We need you…. To Vote for us! (Follow the link in our bio)

We couldn’t be happier to have been nominated for this year’s Building of the Year Awards. Our whole house Renovation and Extension at Hermitage Drive, Edinburgh, has been selected under two categories; Houses and Best Applied Product.

To have been selected from thousands of projects from around the globe is an honour. The awards are the largest community driven architecture award, recognising the best published projects during the previous year.





We did something a little different for our studio Christmas celebrations this year. Earlier in the month the team des...
20/12/2025

We did something a little different for our studio Christmas celebrations this year.

Earlier in the month the team descended on for a couple of days of activities, including bushcraft, axe throwing, sauna, cold plunge and generally soaking up the wonderful scenery.

We even managed a quick stop into on the way back to Edinburgh.

The studio is now closed. We’ll be back at our desks on the 5th January.

From all at Somner Macdonald, have a fantastic festive break.

Address

1A Brougham Place
Edinburgh
EH39HW

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5:30pm
Tuesday 9am - 5:30pm
Wednesday 9am - 5:30pm
Thursday 9am - 5:30pm
Friday 9am - 5:30pm

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