1. Your profile describes interiors as a “journey of storytelling.” How do you translate a client’s personal story into a physical space?
Honestly, it starts with just listening — properly listening, not nodding along while thinking about mood boards. We sit with a family, sometimes over chai, and ask about things that have nothing to do with design at first. Where did they grow up? What’s the one object they’d grab if the house caught fire? A client once told us her grandmother’s old brass diyas meant more to her than any artwork we could source. So we built a whole niche around that — lit it properly, gave it room to breathe. That’s the story doing the talking, not us.
2. What usually inspires your design concepts—architecture, art, fashion, travel, or something else?
It genuinely changes project to project. Sometimes it’s a building we walked past in Kala Ghoda. Sometimes it’s a saree border. We did a living room once that was entirely inspired by the colour combinations in an old Bollywood poster one of my partners collects. I think the mistake a lot of designers make is looking only at other interiors for inspiration — you end up recycling the same Pinterest board everyone else is pulling from.
3. When a client has a completely different taste from your design style, how do you find a balance between their vision and your expertise?
This happens more than people think, and honestly it’s healthy. We’re not decorating our own homes. My rule is: their taste wins, our judgement shapes it. So if someone wants a very maximalist, colour-heavy space and that’s not naturally “our style,” we lean in — but we bring in the discipline around proportion, flow, lighting, so it doesn’t tip into chaos. There’s been pushback sometimes, a client insisting on something we know won’t age well, and in those cases we just say so honestly. We’d rather have an uncomfortable conversation upfront than a client regretting it a year later.
4. What is one design decision you believe can completely transform the feel of a space without requiring a huge budget?
Lighting, every single time. People spend lakhs on furniture and then light the room with one flat ceiling light and wonder why it feels like a waiting room. Layering light — a warm wash near the ceiling, a reading lamp, something low near a console — costs a fraction of a sofa and does more for the “feel” of a room than almost anything else. Second thing, close behind, is just editing what’s already there. Half the homes we walk into don’t need more, they need less.
5. How do you approach designing a home that looks beautiful but is also practical for everyday living?
We try to design for the version of the family that exists at 7am on a Tuesday, not just the version hosting a Diwali party. So we’ll ask boring questions — where do the keys actually land when you walk in, does anyone in the house work from home, is there a dog that’s going to be on that sofa. A beautiful space that a family is scared to actually live in has failed, in my opinion. The goal is that it still looks intentional even with shoes by the door and a kid’s school bag on the chair.
6. With so many interior trends on social media, how do you decide which trends are worth following and which ones to avoid?
We ask one question — is this actually a design idea, or is it just a colour that photographed well this year? Things like better material choices, smarter storage, warmer lighting — those aren’t trends, they’re just good sense, and they stay. But a lot of what’s on Instagram is styling for a fifteen-second reel, not for a home someone will live in for a decade. Arches, a certain shade of sage green, a very specific type of fluted panelling — we use them when they genuinely suit the space, not because they’re everywhere this month.
7. What is the most challenging part of managing a project from the first concept to the final handover?
The gap between the drawing and the site, without question. On paper, everything is perfect. Then you’re on-site and a beam is lower than expected, or a vendor’s timeline slips, or the client suddenly falls in love with a marble that’s out of stock. Managing that — keeping the original intent of the design intact while constantly problem-solving in real time — is where the real work happens. Clients see the pretty renders. They rarely see the fifteen phone calls it took to get a door frame right.
8. Can you share a design project where the client’s requirements pushed your team to think differently or experiment with a new idea?
We had a joint family home in Mumbai where three generations were going to live under one roof, and everyone wanted something different — the grandparents wanted a puja room that felt traditional, the younger couple wanted a very minimal, almost Scandinavian bedroom. Normally you’d just wall those off completely, but instead we used materials as a thread connecting the two — the same wood tone, different finishes, so the home felt like one family, not three separate flats stitched together. It forced us to think about continuity rather than just style.
9. How do you use materials, lighting, textures, and colours to create a particular mood in a space?
We usually start with mood before we start with materials — decide first whether a room should feel calm, energetic, cocooned, open — and then pick everything else to serve that. A textured wall does something a flat painted one can’t. A warm-toned wood makes a room feel smaller and cosier; a light oak opens it up. Colour we tend to use with restraint, one or two anchors rather than a rainbow, and let texture and light carry the rest. It’s less about following a formula and more about constantly checking — does this still feel like what we set out to create.
10. Looking ahead, what changes do you think will shape the future of interior design in Mumbai, especially in urban homes?
Space is only going to get tighter, so I think multi-functional design stops being a “nice idea” and becomes the default — a study that becomes a guest room, storage that disappears into the architecture instead of sitting on top of it. I also think there’s a real shift happening away from copying international design and toward homes that actually reflect where we live — Indian materials, Indian craftsmanship, adapted for how families here actually function. And practically speaking, with the climate we have, I think ventilation and natural light are going to matter more to buyers than they currently do — people are done with beautiful homes that are unbearable in June.
