Wuthering Heights designer reveals the eerie set details that have seriously dark meanings

Emerald Fennell’s glossy new film Wuthering Heights proves the gothic love story is still haunting audiences today. With sets dripping in unsettling details, this adaptation has quickly become one of the most talked-about films of the year.

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Behind those eerie interiors is production designer Suzie Davies, whose previous work includes Saltburn and On Chesil Beach. For Wuthering Heights, Emerald Fennell encouraged her to push the visuals into something almost tactile, less about strict period accuracy and more about raw emotion.

“We wanted to make things look beautiful, but make you feel uneasy when you got closer,” Davies explained to House & Garden. “It needed to sit right on the edge of ‘is that weird or is that okay?’”

And once you know what the set details actually mean, it gets even creepier.

The dollhouse that makes characters look ‘too small’

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Thrushcross Grange’s uncanny vibe starts with its scale. The house was designed to feel like an expanded dollhouse, making the characters seem slightly diminished in their surroundings, a subconscious cue that something is off. Even its striking blue exterior was chosen to feel out of place against the windswept moors, visually signalling that the Grange doesn’t belong.

Cathy’s bedroom walls are literally made of her body

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Perhaps the film’s most disturbing space is Catherine’s “skin room”. Davies created padded wall panels modelled on Margot Robbie’s arms, complete with veins and freckles, then covered the vanity and bed with strands of blonde hair.

The effect is deeply uncomfortable by design: A room built from Catherine herself, embodying obsession, desire, and the way Heathcliff sees her as something to possess.

The ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ doom painting

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Hanging in the Heights’ parlour is a partially obscured painting inspired by a church mural depicting the Seven Deadly Sins. It’s never fully visible on screen, but its looming presence hints at moral decay and the darkness infecting the household.

The drawing room walls reference corpse crystals

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Each room in Thrushcross Grange has its own palette, but the drawing room’s deep blue walls hide an especially macabre detail: They’re studded with crystals meant to resemble vivianite, known as “corpse crystal” because it forms on buried bodies. In other words, death is literally embedded in the walls.

The dining room walls are ‘sweating’

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The Grange’s silver dining room walls are covered in droplet-like textures designed to mimic moisture and perspiration. The idea was to externalise the characters’ intense physical emotions, and the passion in this Wuthering Heights is so overwhelming that even the house itself seems to sweat.

The ghostly hands all over the Grange

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One of the strangest recurring motifs is hands. They appear in chandeliers, candleholders, fireplaces, and ceiling roses, many sculpted from the production team’s own hands. Some even form cheeky shadow-puppet shapes.

For fans of the novel, it’s a clear nod to the iconic scene where Catherine’s ghostly hand grabs Lockwood. Symbolically, the reaching hands reflect Catherine’s endless longing, always grasping for something she can’t quite have.

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Featured image credit: Warner Bros