How do you design a house that truly feels like a home in the city that never sleeps? Would you mirror its vibrancy and restlessness in your flat, or would you create an oasis of calm when your interior design is in Mumbai?
These are all important decisions you will need to take, but before all of that, you need to get your basics right.
What Are the Most Important Principles for Interior Design in Mumbai?
When the ever-expanding range of options stretches before you, it can seem nearly impossible to pick the perfect piece of furniture. Here are some of the most important things you should keep in mind when creating your furniture-shopping game plan:
Tailor Your Furniture to Your Home
Your furniture should fit your home, not the other way around. Before you begin your interior design in Mumbai, measure all of your rooms, making sure not to leave out any little nooks and alcoves.
If you’re handy with some rudimentary tools and have a partner to help out, you can do this yourself. Or, if you want the most accurate measurements and don’t have the time to DIY, your interior designers will be happy to take over.
You can also take pictures of your rooms from different angles so that it’s easier to visualise how a piece of furniture will look in your room when you’re out shopping.
It’s a good idea to buy custom or customisable furniture whenever possible, particularly when it comes to your largest pieces. Modular sofas, for instance, can not only be bought to suit your room’s shape and size, but you can also change their configuration for different occasions, from an intimate family gathering to a bustling party.
Height Does Matter
If you’re one of the few who have lucked out with a large and spacious apartment in the city, you can pick your furniture's height. Higher furniture can lend your rooms an air of regality or cosiness, depending on how it's used.
But if you’d instead make the most of your space, you want to err on the lower side. Low-profile furniture, particularly seating and shelves, looks sleek and contemporary.
More importantly, when combined with an open floor plan, it can make your home look double its square footage. Whether you want to add a touch of mid-century modern class to your living room with a low-backed leather sofa and TV console or go the stylish Scandi route in your bedroom set, you can never go wrong with this tip.
Get Clever With Your Decor
We all know how powerful optical illusions can be, but we tend to forget this when choosing your interior design in mumbai.
Not only do mirrors visually expand a room, but they also reflect natural light and make your space look bright and airy. But it’s time to say goodbye to small and mid-sized mirrors in ornate, bulky frames. Instead, choose oversized ones in a thin, near-invisible setting to maximise their effect.
Gallery walls that climb all the way up and tall, slender houseplants can also give the illusion of sky-high ceilings. Choosing to decorate with mostly lighter colours, and using darker ones only for accents can visually expand your space.
Don’t Be Boring
Remember all those interior design rules that warned you to avoid too many patterns and only add one or two pops of colour to a room? Well, you can toss those in the bin right where they belong.
Don’t get us wrong, minimalism will always be a classic, but we’re here to convince you that maximalism (or something in between the two) can work just as well for interior design in Mumbai.
Working in a compact space like a city apartment means you can’t spread them far apart to make them look more cohesive if you use multiple statement pieces.
Instead, they’ll be on top of each other—sometimes literally, if, for instance, you layer a heavily embroidered traditional throw on a mustard yellow sofa! This makes it all the more important that your pieces work together and complement each other rather than competing for space and attention!
We’ve got an entire guide to maximalism if you’d like to delve deeper into how the style can work for flats. But to get you started, here are a few rules of thumb.
Maximalism: Some Basic Rules
Choose a dimension on which to dial up the maximalism. If you need to be surrounded by punchy colours to stay upbeat, choose a colour scheme for your home and go all out!
But if you enjoy maximalism because it allows you to collect and display beautiful and meaningful objects rather than dismissing them as clutter, you may want to tone down most bright hues.
You can look into the moody maximalism substyle, which takes inspiration from youthful yet elegant design trends like dark academia.
If you have a flair for the dramatic and all things vintage but prefer to be soothed by deep, melancholy shades.
Maximise Storage
If tiny store rooms and cramped pantries aren’t cutting it any more, it may be time to turn to less-common storage options.
During your interior design in Mumbai, One way you can go is up. Designing with tall furniture might not do smaller spaces any favours. Still, cabinetry that stretches upwards is unlikely to have the same effect, especially if it’s the same colour as your walls and blends into the room inconspicuously.
This kind of storage can be particularly elegant in the kitchen, where cabinets stretching to the ceiling can give you some much-needed space and free your counters up of junk.
Make sure to keep a stepladder handy if you go this route, though, so any shorter members of your household aren’t left struggling.
The Value of Emptiness
At the same time, know when to leave a space empty. Using a floating sink or an old-fashioned pedestal sink instead of one with a bulky vanity underneath it can make small bathrooms feel much airier.
You can compensate for the lost storage by adding a cabinet behind the mirror and storing towels and toiletries in bamboo or metal bathroom racks and carts.
Final Note
If this is your first time pondering interior design in Mumbai, or if your space is uniquely challenging, then you may need professionals to step in, at least when it comes to nailing the basics.
Book a consultation with Hipcouch to get started designing the Mumbai home of your dreams.