Lualdi is an Italian brand that manufactures high-end design doors for interiors, but has built its reputation on something beyond the object itself, on the idea that the threshold is an architectural proposal, more than an accessory. Their approach was developed over more than a century of collaborations with some of the most rigorous minds in Italian design and now drives an international expansion strategy.
The brand’s last chapters are on display Madison Ave in New York, launched in September 2025 and a new London flagship up Margarita Streetwhich opened at the beginning of May 2026. The two openings represent the end of a long process, where the exhibition space itself is considered a tool for architecture and not a space for sales.
Lualdi showroom London © Beppe Brancato
Lualdi showroom London © Beppe Brancato
Lualdi showroom London © Beppe Brancato
Lualdi New York showroom © Marco Petrini
Lualdi showroom London © Beppe Brancato
Lualdi showroom London © Beppe Brancato
Lualdi New York showroom © Marco Petrini
Lualdi showroom London © Beppe Brancato
Lualdi’s international presence
From carpentry to design workshop
The history of Lualdi began in 1860, when Carlo Lualdi established a carpentry workshop in Magenta, specializing in the creation of high-quality custom designs. For over a century, it has been a craft, disciplined and local. In the post-war years, a transformation came through a relationship with Milan’s architectural avant-garde. personalities such as Vico Magistretti, Anna Castelli Ferrieri, Marco Zanuso and Luigi Caccia Dominioni began to work with the company.
The collaboration with Caccia Dominioni proved decisive, paving the way for Lualdi’s business breakthrough thanks to the LCD door, which brought industrial design to door production for the first time in the world. No longer a craftsman, Lualdi was now a design firm capable of industrializing a new concept for the interior.
London: the technical and the global
The London flagship on Margaret Street, newly opened on 7 May 2026, focuses on precision and systemicity. The showroom was designed by Piero Lissoniwho has been the brand’s art director since 2010, guiding the company’s style and designing products, showrooms, exhibition stands and communication tools.
Under his direction, the brand has moved its design language away from the door as an isolated object and towards the idea of the door as a system: something that organizes space, defines transition and participates in the overall architecture of a room. Lissoni described his work in the showrooms as a “physical catalogue”, a series of products illustrated by a labyrinthine succession of spaces, doors leading to other rooms, each door a portal to a small world.
The London space expressly resists the usual domestic scene found in exhibition spaces, there are no room sets or narratives. Instead, Lissoni has organized the space as a sequence of technical encounters, each product presented in direct relation to the next, with an emphasis on materials, construction logic and the mechanics of how one system connects to another. The compact footprint is a deliberate choice, as less space means less room for distraction.
This layout conveys a certain idea of what a Lualdi door actually does. Rather than marking a boundary between two rooms, the products in the show suggest the threshold as something active and organizing, a device that shapes how space is used and experienced, not just where one room ends and another begins.
Operating in the UK since the 1990s, the firm’s decision to open a dedicated site in London is part of a wider strategy to provide direct services to architecture and interior design firms. The city acts as a global hub for large architectural practices that carry out projects on multiple continents and need suppliers able to match an international reach with local responsiveness and technical depth.
Fitzrovia was chosen in particular for its vibrant arts and culture scene, a neighborhood that reflects Lualdi’s innovative character: ever-evolving, cosmopolitan and inspiring. A site that operates directly rather than as a distributor means the company can now manage complex large-cycle projects across town rather than remotely, which, for a specification-dependent product like a bespoke door system, is the difference between being a supplier and being a partner.
New York: Scale Architecture
In September 2025, Lualdi opened its new showroom at 180 Madison Avenue, in the heart of Manhattan’s unofficial “made in Italy” district. The 200 square meter space was completely renovated and expanded, designed as a hub dedicated to design culture where architecture, materials and technology interact. In New York, the highest level of customization is expected, as projects require a highly customized approach, and Lualdi has moved beyond its traditional role as a builder to act as a partner in shaping complex spaces.
The Big Apple space realizes this ambition naturally: complete arrangements in which sliding systems, boisettes, movable partitions and built-in furniture define fluid, reconfigurable environments. They don’t just show you a product, but how a whole project could be.
The brand’s relationship with the United States comes from an accumulation of decades of work. The company’s entry into America began through a connection with Carl Magnusson, a designer who worked directly with Knoll, and its first order was the doors for the City Bank tower in New York. Lualdi has two other locations in the US, in Miami and Los Angeles, covering both coasts.
From export to presence
The logic of connecting London and New York reflects a structural change in the way Italian design firms choose to operate internationally. For decades, the model was essentially export: manufactured in Italy, distributed through local dealers and built on brand prestige to sell. However, when the product is a custom system, it is not something that a distributor can sell from a catalog. It requires someone on the ground who can understand the local culture as well as understand the essence of the brand.
THE exhibition spaces they are more than marketing tools; they become an operational infrastructure to change the way the company handles its projects. The geography of Italian design is being redrawn and Lualdia company that started making furniture in a small workshop more than a century and a half ago is helping to chart the new map.
