Heal’s has been a cornerstone of British interiors for more than two centuries. The heritage retailer is best known for bringing contemporary furniture, lighting, and design into British homes, introducing audiences to new styles and ideas long before they became mainstream.
To grasp just how deep its roots run, CEO Hamish Mansbridge offers a quick history lesson. “Heal’s has always been about bringing new ideas to Britain. It was the first to bring proper mattresses to the UK. Before that, you would have been sleeping on a bag of straw, if you were lucky. Otherwise, just the straw.”
The brand, which has moved and evolved with the times, has undergone its biggest repositioning in over a decade, led by independent agency Tomorrowism. The result is a refreshed visual identity, brand position, and tone of voice, brought together under a new campaign, Where Design Lives.
The project was built as a response to the “great flattening” of British interiors, a powerful cultural tension that served as an opportunity for Heal’s to reassert their position as the leading voice in the industry.
“Over time, the interiors market has grown quite homogenised and, frankly, a bit boring,” says Mansbridge. “In that context, we felt people needed a reminder of what Heal’s stands for – that we are the authority on design.”
Tomorrowism’s brand reset for Heal’s
With interiors at risk of losing character and charm, the team noticed a crisis in how we decorate our homes and our spaces, a timely backdrop for reintroducing Heal’s as a heritage name with sharp cultural fluency and the capacity to challenge that conformity.
“Our spaces are becoming generic and less characterful, shaped by algorithms that feed us endless versions of what we already like,” says Beth Bentley, founder and strategy partner at Tomorrowism.
“The result is a worrying sameness – across homes, cities, even continents – compounded by the Instagrammified ‘get the look’ culture, which fuels copycats, dupes and pastiche.”
This homogenisation is fuelled by a race to replicate surface-level aesthetics – the drive to look like everyone else. But good design has always been about more than just appearances; it has the power to shape how we work, play, and live.
“This was the central idea behind the project – the life-changing power of good design,” says Bentley.
“We wanted to position Heal’s as an institution that truly understands what design is for, and what it can do for us in everyday life.” That thinking crystallised in the brand idea – “Where Design Lives.”
The new Heal’s logo lockup
The brand line is seen in the new visual identity, locked up with Heal’s existing wordmark. It is rendered in a free-flowing, handwritten script, which was lifted from the sketchbook explorations by Mark Thompson, creative partner at Tomorrowism.
“The energetic hand-drawn mark evokes the spirit of the design process. Unapologetically real, it’s graceful in its form yet nuanced and full of character,” says Thompson. “It cues the annotation style you may see in the preliminary sketches of a design process.”
Its gestural form creates a point of tension against the structured wordmark, while embodying the human touch and creativity that sit behind every piece of great design.
While Tomorrowism inherited the Heal’s wordmark – and kept it unchanged – it leaned into bolder art direction, felt in how the logo shows up across the brand world.
The wordmark is tweaked and enlarged, taking up space in a way, “this brand has never done before,” says Bentley. “So while we haven’t changed the logo, we’ve very much changed how it behaves.”
A still from the five-episode shoppable documentary series featuring the handwritten typeface
This comes through in the art direction of a five-episode shoppable documentary series featuring leading British tastemakers, which anchors the campaign. The logo, paired with hand-scrawled typography, lends the films a distinctive character while commanding presence on screen.
Running through the project was a clear intention to shed the “polite” signals of heritage branding in favour of a more confident, provocative stance.
That shift is evident not only in the logo lockup, but also in the colour palette, which reimagines Heal’s blue alongside brighter shades of yellow and green, grounded by a parchment tone.
“When you put them all together, you get a palette that feels quite divergent and unusual – particularly for a heritage brand,” says Bentley.
The witty, self-assured spirit of the repositioning comes through most strongly in the brand’s tone of voice. With memorable, sharp taglines like “There’s a reason why all the best chairs are always taken”, “One day your grandchildren will thank you,” and “You can stop blurring your background now,” Heal’s now speaks in a language that draws strength from its heritage while signalling a spirited, forward-looking outlook.
Tomorrowism’s brand reset for Heal’s
For Tomorrowism, striking that balance was key – to define Heal’s not only by its history, but by its appetite for growth and evolution.
“We wanted to highlight the idea that this is a brand not held back by its heritage, but is ever-changing, curious, and progressive,” says Bentley.
With the campaign now live both online and out in the world, Mansbridge hopes it will grab attention and prompt people to think. “Our audience already knows Heal’s, but if the brand has slipped from the centre of their minds, I want this campaign to put it back there,” he says.
“The goal is for people to be talking about Heal’s – not just when they’re shopping, but more broadly, so that whenever anyone is discussing design for the home, Heal’s is the first name that comes up.”
Tomorrowism’s brand reset for Heal’s
The refreshed colour palette
A still from the five-episode shoppable documentary series featuring the handwritten typeface
Tomorrowism’s brand reset for Heal’s