Appalled by the levels of furniture poverty in her local area and recognising the profound impact that our homes have on our wellbeing, Emily Wheeler launched the charity Furnishing Futures. She talks to Rosalind Sack about the importance of creating healing homes for women and children at their most vulnerable
(LEFT) EMILY WHEELER, FOUNDER OF FURNISHING FUTURES. (RIGHT) A PREVIOUSLY UNFURNISHED BEDROOM IN SOCIAL HOUSING IS GIVEN A NEW LEASE OF LIFE BY THE CHARITY. IMAGE: EMILY BOWDEN PHOTOGRAPHY
Furnishing Futures is responding to a hidden crisis. Less than 2% of social housing is furnished. Most is given to people completely bare, without so much as flooring, curtains, white goods or even a bed. It couldn’t be further from the comfortable and healing home that is so desperately needed, particularly by women and children who have been rehoused after escaping domestic violence. As a result, families already struggling to make ends meet often find themselves plunged into poverty at a time when they are at their most vulnerable.
Determined to make a difference and break this vicious cycle of poverty, in 2019 interior stylist and former social worker Emily Wheeler started Furnishing Futures from her kitchen table, becoming a registered chairty two years later. The London-based charity takes quality furniture and homewares donated by interior designers and stylists, retailers and brands that cannot be sold elsewhere and creates healing homes that support women and children’s wellbeing and raise self esteem. They support families in need, restore women’s dignity and give people hope. Discover more about their Buy a Bundle campaign.
To date, the charity has completed 154 homes, supporting around 400 women and has refurbished several refuges across 21 London boroughs, including a seven-bed refuge project for Kiran Support Services, created in collaboration with interior designers Jojo Barr, Laura Hammett and Rebecca Wakefield.
Here, Emily tells us why furniture poverty is such a devastating issue, the importance of creating real social impact, and how Furnishing Futures is also giving the interiors industry a sustainable solution to waste.
What is furniture poverty and why is it such a huge problem?
Furniture poverty is when people can’t afford basic items of essential furniture such as beds, tables, sofas and chairs as well as white goods like fridges, washing machines or a television, and furniture destitution is when someone does not have access to any of those items. It is a widespread problem that is literally hidden behind closed doors and affects millions of people in the UK. For example, five years ago it was estimated that half a million children in England don’t have a bed (according to Buttle UK) and that number will have significantly increased in recent years as child poverty has significantly increased.
Social housing is given without any flooring or curtains and definitely no white goods or furnishings. There used to be grants available through Local Authorities but due to government cuts, many Local Authorities can’t offer this assistance any more and many low cost furniture projects have closed down due to rising costs. With the cost of living crisis and rising inflation it is even harder for those who are struggling to afford basic items for their homes and a lot of people are living in cold, empty homes without even a bed to sleep on or a sofa to sit on.
You cannot thrive in a home that doesn’t even have basic items of furniture; it affects every aspect of your day-to-day existence. Without a fridge or cooker, you can’t cook a healthy meal; without a bed to sleep in, children can’t get a good night’s sleep, which affects their concentration in school and poor sleep impacts their growth and development; without a dining table or comfortable chairs you can’t sit and relax, have friends over or do your homework.
What prompted you to set up Furnishing Futures?
I’m both a registered social worker and a trained interior designer and I’ve done both jobs, which is how the charity came about. I had been working as a real homes writer and stylist for magazines for several years when I went back into frontline social work, and the impact of austerity was really kicking in. I was appalled at the conditions some of the vulnerable families I was working with were living in and there was nowhere for families or professionals to access support with furniture. I was chairing child protection conferences in East London and many of the women and children I met were victims of severe domestic violence. We would support women to leave with their children and they would be given new accommodation, but it was completely empty. There were cases when the women would make the impossible decision to go back home because they couldn’t look after their children properly in those conditions. I decided if there wasn’t any support available, I was going to do something about it.
I still had some contacts in the interiors industry and we had also just furnished our own home at low cost by buying everything pre-loved, so I knew there was amazing furniture out there, I just needed to get it to the people who needed it most. I started off picking up donated second hand furniture during my evenings and weekends after work in my frontline job and supporting women in this situation in my local community, and it grew from there.
I soon realised how much waste there is in the interiors industry generally and how much need there is for a sustainable solution to this. So we now partner with the interiors industry who donate returns, seconds, samples, excess stock and props and we use these furnishings to create fully furnished homes for the women and children we support, who have been rehoused in empty flats after fleeing domestic abuse. These partnerships with interiors brands, stylists and designers ensure that the families always have good quality furnishings in excellent new condition because this raises self esteem and helps us to ensure they feel loved and valued as well as reducing landfill.
A BEDROOM VIRTUALLY UNRECOGNISABLE AFTER FURNISHING FUTURES REINVENTED THE SPACE
Your mission is to create ‘healing homes’ – what kind of impact does our home have on our mental health and wellbeing?
Our homes have a profound impact on our mental health and wellbeing. We all need somewhere that feels safe and comfortable and meets all our basic human needs as a starting point, but a home that makes us feel uplifted can significantly raise our self esteem and improve our lives. Research also shows that we need to feel we have some control over how our homes look and feel, and that this is particularly important to women’s mental health.
The women and children who we create homes for have experienced significant trauma through domestic violence, and often face multiple other disadvantages too. They have often fled for their lives and had to leave everything behind, which is traumatic in itself, but then to be rehoused in a cold, empty flat with bare concrete floors, no oven or washing machine and no furniture or access to support, compounds their trauma. These women have often lost access to their finances or had to leave their jobs to move to a new area, and it can be impossible to afford the essential items they need to build a new home for them and their children.
That is where we come in – we create healing homes that support women and children to rebuild their lives at a difficult time. We fully furnish and decorate their empty homes and give them everything they need to start again, so that at least they have a safe and comfortable new home as they start their journey to recovery. The women tell me that they feel listened to, respected and valued at a time when the system and other people have made them feel worthless or undeserving. And their children tell me that having the support makes them feel safe and happy when they were scared and uncertain. So it really can be a healing experience for them.
A LIVING ROOM OVERHAUL BY THE TEAM AT FURNISHING FUTURES
You follow the principles of ‘trauma-informed design’ – what is this and what impact does it have?
Trauma-informed design brings the principles of trauma-informed practice into design to create environments that support feelings of wellbeing, safety and healing. Being ‘trauma-informed’ means acknowledging that someone has likely experienced trauma and recognising how this impacts the rest of their life, so this affects how we work with people’s homes as these are our most private and personal spaces and affect how we feel. There is a strong connection between our lived environment and how we feel and behave, so it follows that if we create intentionally supportive and safe spaces we will support those feelings in the people who inhabit them.
Social workers are trained to work in a trauma-informed way and so it made logical sense that I took the same approach with the charity because the support we provide is rooted in the empowering and caring principles of social work. On a practical level it means really listening to and empowering the women we support; being honest and transparent; considering their culture and identity and making sure the choices we make help them feel as safe as possible.
In design terms it means really listening to and respecting their individual needs and wants; using colours, shapes and textures that help them feel safe and soothed; promoting biophilic design principles and a healing connection to nature; removing stressors, objects or colours that might remind someone of a traumatic event or make them feel stressed or over stimulated, and helping them to gain a sense of control and order in their home. It also means creating clear sight lines that tell the brain it is safe, maximising natural light and including plants for example.
A LIVING AREA OVERHAUL FOR A VICTIM OF DOMESTIC ABUSE USING TRAUMA-INFORMED DESIGN PRINCIPLES
Can people select their own furniture, paint colours and accessories and how does this work?
We try as much as we can to create homes that the families love and to give them choices about the colours, furnishings and accessories. I take a brief when I first meet them, and I visit the home and measure up just as I would with any design client. Having choice is extremely important when most of your choices have been taken away from you. Obviously we work within the constraints of what we have available as donations, but we try not to compromise if we can avoid it. If we don’t have the right things available as donations, we get onto the phone or email and contact companies to ask if they have anything suitable they could donate and we also do regular wish lists to fill any gaps or fund raise for missing items. Our supporters, the brands and design studios that donate to us are incredibly generous and we usually manage to get hold of the right products to create the families’ dream homes.
Can you talk us through some of the most memorable homes you have worked on or women you have helped?
They are all memorable because they all have such powerful stories and are incredibly strong inspiring women. Most of the women we have supported stay in touch afterwards and message to let us know how they are getting on. Although we are involved for a short time, you do get to know the beneficiaries well because we are working on their homes. Two that stand out recently were both young women who had experienced domestic abuse and fled during pregnancy, both spent most of their pregnancies in appalling emergency accommodation or sofa surfing while the Council tried to find them properties and then both were rehoused within days of their babies being born.
Two completely different women but very similar situations, and both were incredibly stressed by not knowing where they were taking their newborn baby home to. And then being given completely empty properties the day before they were due to give birth in one case, and two days after the baby was born in the other. We were able to create beautiful cosy homes for both of them and it really meant the world. The relief they felt was palpable. It’s often very emotional when they see their finished home for the first time.
THE LAUNCH OF THE ATRIUM; FURNISHING FUTURES’ NEW EVENT SPACE, DESIGN COMMUNITY DESTINATION AND FUNDRAISING RETAIL SHOWROOM IN EAST LONDON
There is a sustainability impact to what you do as well, isn’t there?
Giving the interiors industry a sustainable solution to waste is a huge part of what we do. In fact I won the BBC Make a Difference Environment Award for the re-use element of the project. We provide a sustainable solution to two problems; furniture poverty and waste in the industry. Brands often can’t sell items that are returned, slightly imperfect or samples, or they might simply have dead stock they can’t get rid of. Equally, design studios have products that were purchased for projects and never used, and companies often have products that were used as props for shoots or in showrooms that they won’t sell on. We take these perfectly good furnishings, saving them from landfill, and we use them to create beautiful homes.
This year you also launched The Atrium. Can you tell us more about this?
Located in a Victorian warehouse in Leyton’s Mentmore Studios, The Atrium is open to the public and is an extension of the charity’s existing HQ in East London. The space is a multifunctional venue – an event space, design community destination and fundraising retail showroom – amd it programmes inspiring and informative events hosted by leaders in design, sustainability and social impact. It is also a base for Furnishing Futures’ mentoring programme for its beneficiaries and a permanent showroom for its unique homewares store, selling high end furnishings donated by its brand partners.
It’s an inspiring, uplifting place that brings together people, design and purpose to help rebuild lives and create systemic change. By coming here and becoming part of this community and supporting our events, people can be part of a thoughtful, integrity driven conversation, come away with something beautiful for their home and, in doing so, support the families who really need it.
How can people get involved?
We are always looking for brands, interior design studios, designers and stylists to partner with us. In 2025 we announced new brand partnerships with leading homeware brands Heal’s, COAT paints, Patch Plants, Swyft and Le Creuset. We are also incredibly grateful to people for volunteering or raising funds, such as by donating to our Buy a Bundle campaign.
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