Surprisingly little work has been done to gain understanding about the nature, stability and properties of nanoparticles dispersed in organic solvents (organosols). Recently [ref 2], a reliable and reproducible method for formulating model silica organosols (silica nanoparticles, stabilised by adsorbed surfactant in non-polar organic solvents) has been developed. Previous SANS work (Figure 1 (a)) has shown that in sols stabilised by ionic surfactants, the coated nanoparticles coexist with inverse surfactant micelles. Here it is proposed to study a new class of colloids: bi-disperse, hard-soft systems comprising silica nanoparticles which are themselves in equilibrium with a background population of water swollen inverse micelles/microemulsion droplets. As well as being of theoretical interest, these systems could provide formulations for new synthetic approaches.