Mild Studio: Beyond aesthetics

By Nane Steinhoff

Mild Studio’s interiors go beyond surface beauty, drawing on the character of a person, company or building. From private homes to ambitious commercial spaces, the Lithuanian architecture and interior design studio creates environments that feel personal, purposeful and enduring – places meant not only to be seen, but also recognised and inhabited.

Founded in 2012 by architect Lina Bakienė, Mild Studio has grown from a residentially focused practice into a multidisciplinary interior architecture studio known for thoughtful residential, workplace and commercial interiors. It began as Mild Home, a name reflecting early commissions in residential houses and apartments, where every detail was tied to individual habits, emotions and daily rituals. That intimate understanding of how people live remains central to the studio’s work today, even as its projects have expanded in scale and complexity. “Working on residential projects taught us sensitivity,” Bakienė explains. “The scale is smaller and more personal, and every decision affects someone’s everyday life very directly.”

Lina Bakienė. Photo: Norbert Tukaj

As the team moved into designing offices and larger commercial environments, that sensitivity became a way to understand organisations. The question was no longer only how a space should look, but how it could express behaviour, ambition and culture. “When we designed our first offices, I began to realise that an interior could do much more than simply look good,” she says. “A strong spatial character could influence how a company felt, how people behaved inside it and how the organisation presented itself.”

Private house in Kaunas. Photo: Lina Adi Photography

Designing the client

Mild Studio resists the idea of a recognisable house style. Its projects may differ in tone and aesthetic, yet they are connected by the philosophy that interiors should reveal the identity already present in a client, company or building, rather than impose a designer’s visual signature. “We don’t believe that every client should receive a recognisable Mild formula,” Bakienė says. “We would rather people recognise the client than recognise us.”

Reitan Convenience office in Vilnius. Photo: Norbert Tukaj

This makes the studio’s process both analytical and intuitive. Early conversations focus less on decoration than on atmosphere, function and feeling. “If someone comes to us with a clear visual direction, we respect it – that becomes our starting point,” Bakienė says. “Our role is to understand what feeling they’re really looking for and then translate that into something more coherent, durable and long-lasting.” From there, Mild Studio studies the site, structure and people who will use it. In commercial projects, that may mean observing how teams communicate, how clients are received, whether hierarchy is visible and how informal or structured the culture truly is.

“We’re interested in the real culture of the organisation, not only the identity written in a brand book,” Bakienė says. “We don’t try to force a brand statement onto reality. We design for what actually exists.” The result is interior architecture that grows from function rather than decoration, with circulation, proportion, light, materials and atmosphere becoming part of a larger story.

Private house in Oak Street. Photo: Lina Adi Photography

When space becomes strategy

Recent projects show how this approach creates tangible value. For Reitan’s office, the ambition was to move beyond corporate workplace conventions towards the atmosphere of a family office. A heritage building provided the framework, allowing Mild Studio to use historic walls, warm materials, art and domestic cues to create a workplace that felt welcoming, personal and connected to its setting.

Urbo Bank offered a different challenge. Mild Studio joined while the organisation was still Medicinos Bankas and its new identity was being formed. Rather than translating an established brand into interiors, the studio helped shape how the transformation could be experienced physically, retaining the solidity expected of a bank while allowing the company to appear more contemporary and confident.

Heritage projects reveal another dimension of the studio’s philosophy. For an office interior inside a protected building, colours and details were drawn from original polychromy, old black-and-white tiles and preserved architectural features. New elements did not compete with the existing fabric; they clarified and elevated it. The project won the award for Best Office Interior at Metų Erdvė 2025.

For Bakienė, this is where interior architecture becomes more than an aesthetic service. It can support company culture, improve how people use a workplace, influence client perception and add desirability to a property. The difference between a beautiful interior and a meaningful one, she suggests, is time: “A beautiful interior may photograph perfectly on day one, while a meaningful interior still works ten years later.”

Looking ahead, Mild Studio wants to influence architecture from the earliest stages, bringing buildings and interiors into a more coherent whole. Hospitality is another area of interest, particularly hotels, where brand, emotion, service and memory must work together. Yet the ambition remains clear: to design spaces that belong unmistakably to those who use them. As Bakienė puts it, “A logo tells you what a company says it is. A space lets you experience it.”