We are going to write about Irish brands we rate, and there is no honest way to start anywhere other than April and the Bear. Partly because the shop is very good. Mostly because they proved the thing we are trying to do actually works here.
The short version
Siobhan Lam founded April and the Bear in 2014, after a house renovation turned into an obsession with interiors. She could not find the eclectic, well-made, reasonably priced things she wanted in Ireland, so she started curating them herself.
It began online only. Then pop-ups around Dublin, which showed her that people wanted somewhere to actually stand in. Then a shop on Cows' Lane in Temple Bar. Then Wynnefield Road. Then the current place on Rathmines Road, which by her own account was a brutal fit-out: floors laid, ceilings pulled down, walls plastered, the whole thing over budget and late.
Today it is one of Ireland's leading independent interiors and lifestyle stores, with a design studio attached.
Why we rate it
The point of view is the product. Everything in there has been chosen by someone with an actual opinion. Her own test is whether a piece makes her smile, and if it does not, it does not go in. That sounds soft until you walk into a shop that has no test at all and feel the difference immediately.
She designed the prints herself. This is the detail that mattered most to us. Before it was a furniture shop, it was a woman making witty typographic posters and selling them alongside things she liked. A decade on, exclusive art prints are still a core part of the range. Prints are not a phase you grow out of on the way to selling sofas. They are the thing that gives a shop a voice.
The blog came first, and it worked. She won Best Business Blog at the Image.ie awards early on, when the business was tiny and she was working alone. Irish press picked the brand up and kept picking it up, which she has been generous about crediting. Independent shops here do not get discovered by accident.
Eclectic, not tasteful. Mid-century bar stools beside industrial lighting beside something bright and slightly daft. It should not work and it does, because it looks like a real person collected it rather than a buying algorithm.
What we take from it
We are a different shop. Their range is eclectic and international; ours is built around Irish language and Irish place-pride, which is a corner nobody else is standing in. But the shape of the thing is the same, and it is proof the shape holds up in a market this size.
Start online. Make the thing only you can make. Curate around it. Write, because writing is how small Irish shops get found. Let the range widen when it earns the right to.
Go and have a look at them in Rathmines, or at aprilandthebear.com. If you are in the market for a mid-century sofa we are no help to you whatsoever, and they are.
Read on
If you are styling a room this autumn, our piece on the autumn 2026 colour shift covers the tones doing the work this season. If you have taken on a place that needs more than styling, the Vacant Property Refurbishment Grant is worth knowing about before you start.
And if it is prints you are after, ours are in The Slang Series and As Gaeilge.
Last verified 27 August 2026. We have no commercial relationship with April and the Bear. We just like the shop. The photographs here are our own library, not theirs.