Residential · Ahmedabad
A family home that keeps a real sense of play in the grown-up rooms too.
The family had just moved into a duplex with a double-height living volume and no real plan for it. They wanted a home that felt warm and grown-up - somewhere they could host - without losing the everyday mess of two young children. The word they kept using was "unfussy". Nothing precious, nothing they'd be anxious about scuffing.
The double height gave the loft its drama and also its problem - sound bounced, the room felt cold, and the upper landing was dead space overlooking nothing. Storage was scattered, and the kids' zones had been pushed to the far end where no one could keep half an eye on them. The plan needed to feel generous and contained at the same time.
We anchored the tall wall with a full-height oak-and-cane library that draws the eye up on purpose, and softened everything below with wool, jute and a deep coral reading nook. The upper landing became a slim loft study with a slatted rail, so a parent working up there stays in earshot of the living room below. Play is not sealed off in a kids' room - it threads quietly through the whole plan.
A floor-to-ceiling oak library tames the double height and turns the tallest wall into the room's anchor rather than its problem.
The dead upper landing became a slatted-rail study - private enough to focus, open enough to hear the kids two floors of ceiling below.
Wool, jute and cane absorb the echo; a sunken coral nook gives the big room a small, cosy heart to curl into.
Flush ledge cabinetry runs the living wall and hides the toys, chargers and clutter of daily life behind a calm oak line.
A base of warm neutrals and honest materials - oak, cane, lime plaster, wool - with terracotta and a single deep coral to keep it from feeling careful.
Rather than wall the plan up, we zoned it with level changes, rugs and a single spine of joinery. The living-and-nook heart sits under the double height; the kitchen tucks behind it; the kids' wing runs along the quieter side within sightline of the sofa; and the loft study floats above, connected by the slatted rail. Cooking, homework, hosting and slumping all happen in view of each other without ever colliding.
Full-height oak-and-cane library
Sunken coral reading nook
Slatted-rail loft study
"It's the first home we've had that feels finished and completely un-precious. The kids treat the whole place like theirs, and somehow it still looks like the adults live here too."
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