Supremati Interior Design

The plans for this house were already drawn. Technically, there was nothing wrong with them.

Our client knew exactly what was missing, and it started in the kitchen. She cooks with friends and family around her — that is where her evenings actually happen. On paper it was a room to cook in, not a room to live in.

So the brief was a layout that works as hard as the house is large. A kitchen designed around the way she really cooks and gathers, with the utility a few steps away and a laundry shaft exactly where it saves her a staircase. An entrance that makes an impression, with his office directly off it. His and her bathrooms. A wardrobe with real capacity. Storage everywhere it can hide. Every square inch of 600 square metres earning its place.

We went through the house room by room, asking not “does it work?” but “does it work for her?”

Swipe for before and after, ground floor and first — and where those plans are heading.

People think interior design starts with the beautiful things. It starts here, where nothing is beautiful yet and everything is decided.

Nothing in this room was chosen from a catalogue.

A closer look at the bedroom of our Albion Gate apartment — a 1930s art-deco building on the edge of Hyde Park — and why each material is there.

The headboard is upholstered to the width of the bed and set into a polished timber frame, with a single line of antique brass nailheads run by hand along the seam.

The wall behind it is not painted. A fine woven cloth absorbs light instead of bouncing it back, set against one dark lacquered wall to give the corner some weight.

The cushions are bouclé, edged in a dark brush fringe so the pale bed has an outline rather than dissolving into the linen.

The bedside chest is dark timber polished to a mirror, inlaid with fine brass lines and finished with a leather-and-brass ring pull. The lamp beside it is a hand-blown bronze-mirrored body on a slim plinth, chosen because it reflects the room back rather than adding another colour to it.

Above the headboard, two framed works on paper. In a room this restrained, the art is the only thing allowed to be busy.

Every surface here was chosen for how it behaves: in daylight, under lamplight, and under the hand. That is the difference between a room that has been decorated and a room that has been designed.