Ligia Cisneros Is Bringing Bold Color Home to Miami

Miami Biscayne welcomes interior designer Ligia Cisneros for a conversation about color, partnership and the Miami rooms her studio is making.

Ligia Cisneros is a co-owner and principal designer of No. 9 Studio, the Miami interior design firm she runs with her partner, Anasofia Guardia. She brings more than 13 years across interior design and the furniture industry, built on a bachelor's degree in interior design from SCAD: first at Perkins&Will in Miami, then more than six years at Clima Home and more than two at Elemento Living, a luxury outdoor design studio in Miami Beach. Her own work leans bold, sculptural and unapologetically colorful.

The two designers met as colleagues in the luxury furniture business, began taking projects on the side, mostly through referrals, and then formalized the partnership as a company they own equally. The studio celebrated its first year in 2026. Its work runs from family homes in Pinecrest and a custom new-construction home with The Arko Group to pool decks in Miami Beach and Brickell and Clima Home's Royal Botania showroom. In this interview, Cisneros talks about the furniture years, the meaning behind the name and why every project starts with the people who will live in it.

Miami Biscayne (MB): You began at Perkins&Will, on a team that included the Cisneros Group's Miami headquarters. What did an architecture firm give you?

Ligia Cisneros: Discipline. At a firm like that you learn that a beautiful idea has to survive drawings, budgets and coordination with everyone else on the project. It taught me to think about the whole building, not just the room in front of me.

MB: Then came more than eight years in furniture, at Clima Home and Elemento Living. What did the furniture side teach you?

Ligia Cisneros: How a room actually gets used. When you work with furniture every day, you see that a sofa or a dining table decides how people live in a space far more than any rendering does. That's stayed with me. I still start with how someone will sit, gather and move, and build the room around that.

MB: Outdoor furniture is your specialty. What do you check first when a piece has to live through a Miami summer?

Ligia Cisneros: Hardware first. Marine grade stainless holds; anything less starts to rust at the joints. Then the powder coat on the aluminum, then the fabric. Solution-dyed acrylic keeps its color because the pigment is in the fiber, not on it. I'd rather see what a full summer does to a finish than trust any spec sheet.

MB: You and Anasofia met as colleagues in that industry. How did a friendship at work become a studio you own together?

Ligia Cisneros: Slowly, and on the side. We saw spaces the same way but came at them from different angles, and that balance worked from the very first project. We took jobs through referrals on early mornings, late nights and weekends until it was clear this wasn't a side thing anymore. Then we made it official, as equal partners.

MB: Why No. 9?

Ligia Cisneros: It comes from 999, the angel number for completion and transformation. That's what we do for a space, and it's what we were doing in our own lives when we started the studio. Every project closes one chapter and starts the next.

MB: Your own style is bold, sculptural and colorful, yet the studio says it has no house look. How do those fit together?

Ligia Cisneros: I love funky forms and saturated color, and Amsterdam's creative spirit inspires me. But the room isn't about me. It's about the client, the space and the story we're telling, so a project might end up tropical modern, minimal, bold or something unexpected. Color is just one of the tools.

MB: In a Pinecrest family home you redesigned the playrooms, bathrooms and foyer, including a 94-square-foot cabana bath. What makes a small room like that worth the attention?

Ligia Cisneros: Small rooms get used constantly, so every decision shows. With the cabana bath we wanted it playful but polished, a room that makes you smile every time you walk in from the pool. In a family home, the rooms also have to be durable and able to grow with the kids.

MB: So much of your work happens outside, from a Miami Beach pool deck to a Brickell condo deck. How do you design for Miami outdoors?

Ligia Cisneros: We treat the outdoors as another room of the house. In Miami you live outside all year, so a pool deck should work for dining, lounging and everyday retreat, with materials that hold up to sun and salt. When it works, the house and the deck read as one home.

MB: Tell us something that might surprise people about the studio.

Ligia Cisneros: Our team has two more members: Bodie, our flooring inspector, and Athena, our fabric inspector. They take their jobs very seriously.

You can follow Ligia on: Instagram | No. 9 Studio on Instagram

Quick answers

Who is Ligia Cisneros?

Ligia Cisneros is a Miami interior designer and co-owner and principal designer of No. 9 Studio, with more than 13 years in interior design and the furniture industry.

Who owns No. 9 Studio?

Ligia Cisneros and Anasofia Guardia, who own it equally.

Where did Ligia Cisneros study?

She holds a bachelor's degree in interior design from SCAD.