Designing Homebody by Sophie: A Pilates Studio That Feels Like Coming Home
By Stephanie Ferrara
Some briefs arrive as a list of requirements. Others arrive as a feeling. When Sophie first sat down with us to talk about her new mat Pilates studio in Leichhardt, she didn't lead with square metres or joinery — she led with three words: come home to your body. That's the ethos behind Homebody by Sophie, and from that first conversation, it became the design brief in its entirety.
The brief: a studio that doesn't feel like a studio
Homebody isn't a gym, and Sophie was clear it should never feel like one. Her classes span mat Pilates, ballet, stretch and breathwork — including intimate pre- and postnatal sessions — and her clients arrive at all sorts of moments in their lives: rebuilding strength, slowing down, reconnecting. The space needed to hold all of that.
So the question we kept returning to throughout the design process was simple: what does home feel like, and how do you build it into a commercial fitout on Norton Street?
Our approach: softness, done properly
Wellness spaces so often fall into one of two traps — clinical and cold, or so heavily themed they feel like a set. We wanted neither. Instead, we did what we always do: we started with how the space would actually be used, hour by hour, and let the feeling lead the finishes.
That meant a warm, muted palette and tactile, natural materials — surfaces you want to touch, tones that settle the nervous system rather than stimulate it. It meant being disciplined about clutter and visual noise, because calm is designed in the gaps as much as the details. And it meant treating the sequence of arrival with real care: from the street, through the entry, to the mat, the space is designed to slow your pace with every step. By the time class begins, you've already exhaled.
Natural light does a great deal of the heavy lifting, as it should. Clean sight lines keep the studio floor feeling open and generous, while softer moments — considered lighting, layered texture — give the more intimate classes, like the prenatal sessions, the sense of shelter they deserve.
The details that matter
Because Homebody's offering is grounded in slow, precise movement, the details had to hold up to long, quiet looks. There's nowhere to hide in a room where people spend an hour on their backs, gazing upward. Every junction, every transition, every fitting was chosen knowing it would be seen — really seen — by someone mid-breathwork.
It's the same philosophy we bring to our residential work: beautiful and liveable, in that order and in equal measure. A commercial space simply has more people living in it.
The result
The finished studio feels less like a fitness venue and more like a sanctuary that happens to hold Pilates classes — calm, editorial and unmistakably Homebody. It's a space that embodies Sophie's belief that the body deserves somewhere gentle to come home to, and we couldn't be prouder to have built that home with her.
If you're local to the Inner West, we can't recommend a visit enough — you'll find Homebody by Sophie on Norton Street, Leichhardt, with the full class timetable at homebodybysophie.com.
