Demo mockup by AirWeb · Demo mockup · airweb.pro
A restaurant in burnt orange with turquoise chairs

We design rooms people want to sit in — cafés, shops and workplaces, built around colour rather than decorated with it.

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Lisbon, Portugal · est. 2017 Cafés · Shops · Workplaces · Colour
Pomelo Studio®
Studio

Colour is a material. We specify it the way other studios specify oak.

Since 2017 we have finished 61 rooms in Lisbon and Porto — cafés, two bakeries, a record shop, and offices for people who were tired of grey carpet.

Every scheme starts with three colours and one rule about where they may go. We paint full-size samples on your wall before anything is ordered, because a swatch the size of a stamp has never told anyone the truth.

About the studio
61rooms finished since 2017
3colours per scheme, almost always
1:1samples painted on your wall
9 wksaverage, brief to opening day
Selected works All 9 projects
A restaurant with yellow walls and wooden tables
Fig. 01

Bica Café

Café · 2025

Ninety square metres in Graça, painted a yellow that holds up under fluorescent light at seven in the morning and still looks warm at nine at night.

A green armchair in a colourful room with artwork
Fig. 02

Mira Showroom

Shop · 2024

A furniture showroom where the walls had to disappear behind the stock — so we made them one deep green and let the products be loud instead.

An orange armchair bathed in sunlight near a window
Fig. 03

Sol Office

Workplace · 2024

Thirty desks and one rule: no meeting room without daylight. The orange is on the furniture, not the walls, so it can be moved when the team grows.

A yellow and white café interior with cushioned benches
Fig. 04

Nata Bakery

Café · 2023

Cream and butter yellow, benches deep enough to sit sideways, and a counter height set by the owner's shoulders rather than a standard.

A restaurant with yellow walls and yellow chairs

Layout, seating counts, lighting and the whole colour scheme — plus the unglamorous half: extraction routes, acoustic panels and a counter your staff can work behind for ten hours.

  • Seating plan
  • Lighting
  • Colour scheme
  • Joinery drawings
  • 8–14 weeks
This season

Four colours we keep coming back to

Pomelo PinkNCS S 1070-Y90R
Bica YellowNCS S 0570-Y10R
Mira GreenNCS S 3050-G10Y
Late BlackNCS S 9000-N
A wall painted in green, yellow and red blocks
Nobody has ever asked us to make a room quieter after living in it.
Rita Bastos — founding partner
FAQ

Your questions,
answered

Quick answers to what people ask before the first visit. Anything missing, write to us — we answer the same day.

Is all this colour going to date badly?
Some of it will, and we plan for that. The expensive things — floors, joinery, seating frames — stay neutral. The colour lives on paint, textiles and chairs, which is the part you can redo in a weekend five years from now.
Can you work with our landlord's restrictions?
Usually. Most leases allow paint and free-standing pieces and forbid touching services or the shopfront. Send us the lease with the brief and we will tell you what is possible before you pay us anything.
Do you do the building work too?
No — we design, specify and supervise. We tender the job to three contractors we trust in Lisbon, read the quotes with you, and then visit the site twice a week until it opens.
How long does a café take?
Eight to fourteen weeks from brief to opening, of which four to six are on site. The longest wait is almost always furniture, so we order it in week two.
What if we hate the colour once it is on the wall?
You will have seen it at full size on your own wall, in your own light, for at least three days before anything is ordered. In eight years that has changed the scheme eleven times and saved eleven repaints.
Clients
People photograph the room and post it without us asking. That has done more for us than the ads we used to buy.
Duarte NunesBica Café
1 / 3
Bica Café
Contact us

Tell us about the room, and who has to work in it.

First conversation is free and takes about an hour, on site if you already have keys. You leave with three colours and an honest number.

Emailola@pomelo.pt Phone+351 213 000 000
StudioRua da Boavista 44, Lisbon
HoursMon–Fri, 10:00–19:00
A yellow and white café interior
Let's chat