Interiors · Abu Dhabi & Riyadh
Reading time: 5 minBrau shapes brows and lashes for a living, which is to say its business is transformation. So the cleverest thing about the two new Brau studios by H2R Design is that the rooms transform too. In Riyadh, the flagship literally shifts colour through the day. The space performs the very thing that happens inside it.
Here is a simple idea that a lot of retail design misses: the space should do what the brand does. Brau, the region’s leading brow, lash and semi-permanent makeup studio, is in the business of transformation, of subtly reshaping a face. And in its two new locations, designed by H2R Design, the interiors are built to transform as well.
This is the fifth Brau or hospitality project I have seen from H2R, the homegrown studio of brothers Hasan and Husain Roomi, and it shows a different side of them. Following the success of Brau Jumeirah in Dubai, they have delivered two very different new studios, Brau Abu Dhabi and Brau Saudi Arabia in Riyadh, that share one identity but wear it in two contrasting ways. Both are exercises in what H2R calls Brau’s “sculptural minimalism,” all soft curves, organic geometry, warm tone and tactile surface. But the interesting story is how that single language bends to fit two opposite briefs, and how, in the bigger of the two, the design turns the idea of transformation into something you can actually watch happen.
Brau Abu Dhabi
Riyadh: the room that changes with the light
Start with the flagship, because it is where the concept sings.
For Brau’s debut in Saudi Arabia, at The Canopy Mall in Riyadh, H2R designed around a single evocative idea: “The Wondrous Portal.” The brief was to make transformation itself the subject, and the studio pursued it through light, texture and material. Curved surfaces and sculpted forms set the whole space in motion, so that guests drift intuitively from one zone to the next through diffused gradients and rhythmic sequencing, an experience the studio rightly calls almost cinematic.
The masterstroke is in the materials. Alongside microcement, marble and speciality paints, H2R used dichroic metals, surfaces that shift colour depending on the light hitting them. The result is a flagship that changes tone through the day, cool in one hour and warm in another, never quite the same room twice. Think about how perfect that is for a beauty studio. The client comes to be transformed, and the space around her is quietly transforming too, dawn to dusk, in sympathy. Add the drama of an emerald green tunnel, sculpted ceilings and terracotta-toned gradients, and Brau Riyadh becomes a genuinely experiential place, bold yet soothing, where the architecture is a metaphor for the service made real.
One detail deserves singling out: a multifunctional architectural wall that works at once as the statement entrance, the retail display and the brow bar itself. Three jobs, one sculptural gesture, its organic geometry playing matte against glossy. It is the whole project in miniature, simplicity elevated through precision, and it anchors the flagship in Brau’s DNA even as the room shimmers and shifts around it.
Brau Saudi Arabia
Abu Dhabi: calm within constraint
The Abu Dhabi studio is the opposite kind of achievement, and just as skilful.
Tucked into the Waitrose Centre, Brau Abu Dhabi handed H2R a compact, highly technical footprint, the sort of tight space where every millimetre has to earn its place. The studio approached it, in their words, with the precision of a sculptor, resolving the operational puzzle first, then layering in the feeling. Where Riyadh is expansive and theatrical, Abu Dhabi is a jewel box, and the design leans into restorative calm rather than drama.
The palette does the work: soft sand beige, terracotta clay, warm ivory, and Brau’s signature Red Travertine, which makes its statement right at the entrance as a sculptural anchor, a promise of the journey inside. Within, the space unfolds through gentle curves, layered textures and subtle tonal gradients that give it depth without clutter. The materials stay deliberately simple and expressive, plastered surfaces and warm stone, so that the small room feels serene and whole rather than cramped. It is proof that constraint, handled well, produces its own kind of luxury: not the luxury of space, but of everything being exactly considered.
Brau Abu Dhabi
One brand, two temperaments
Seen side by side, the two studios are a lesson in how a brand identity should travel.
They are unmistakably siblings, sharing the same sculptural minimalism, the same warm materiality, the same instinct for soft, organic form. Yet neither is a copy of the other. Abu Dhabi is compact precision and restorative warmth; Riyadh is expansive fluidity and expressive, shifting materiality. This is the hard part of designing for a growing brand, and H2R makes it look effortless: keeping a recognisable soul while letting each location breathe as itself, shaped by its size, its city and its role. A brand that looked identical everywhere would feel like a chain. Brau, in H2R’s hands, feels like one confident idea speaking in two accents.
For a region whose beauty, retail and wellness scene is expanding fast, that is a genuinely useful benchmark, a demonstration that brand growth can be led by emotion, atmosphere and design rather than by simple repetition.
Brau Saudi Arabia
Frequently asked questions
What is Brau? Brau is a leading Middle Eastern brow, lash and semi-permanent makeup studio. H2R Design has created several of its spaces, including Brau Jumeirah in Dubai and the newer Brau Abu Dhabi and Brau Saudi Arabia.
Who designed the new studios? H2R Design, the London and Dubai studio founded by brothers Hasan and Husain Roomi, known for warm, sculptural, material-led interiors.
What is the concept in Riyadh? “The Wondrous Portal,” a flagship at The Canopy Mall that explores transformation through light and material, including dichroic metals that shift colour through the day, an emerald green tunnel, and a multifunctional wall that serves as entrance, retail display and brow bar.
How does Abu Dhabi differ? Brau Abu Dhabi, in the Waitrose Centre, is a compact, restorative jewel-box space anchored by Brau’s signature Red Travertine, prioritising calm and precision over drama.
What links the two? A shared “sculptural minimalism,” soft curves, organic geometry and warm materials, adapted to each location’s size and context.
Brau Abu Dhabi
Final thoughts
The best brand spaces are not backdrops. They are arguments, made in material and light, about what the brand believes. Brau believes in transformation, and H2R Design has given that belief a form, most literally in Riyadh, where the very surfaces of the room change through the day, and more quietly in Abu Dhabi, where a tight space is transformed into a small sanctuary by nothing more than careful curves and warm stone.
Taken together, the two studios show a brand growing up gracefully, and a design practice that understands the difference between consistency and repetition. H2R has not simply rolled out a look. It has built two spaces that each feel wholly Brau and wholly themselves, and that quietly perform, in curves and colour and shifting light, the small daily magic the brand is there to provide.
Brau Saudi Arabia
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