Solace

Solace is a three-bedroom flat in Kaloor, high above Kochi, designed to switch the day off. The studio’s work here was the interior rather than the building: the colour scheme, furniture layout, lighting, joinery, planting and art. The existing plan is unusual — its rooms sit on angled walls around a central dining space — and the joinery was drawn piece by piece to fit it.

The palette started with the light, not with a style. The windows face north, so daylight arrives soft and even, and the colours were chosen to suit both that orientation and the existing floor tiles. Soft greys and white carry the walls and joinery, warmed by timber veneers, dark wood and rattan: a neutral, timeless mix with a Scandinavian lean.

Nothing asks for attention. That is the point.

In the living room the television sits on an arched, marble-look panel beside a strip of timber slats, above a floating, round-ended console, and two rattan hoop chairs wait by the window with the city beyond. The dining wall answers with a grey cabinet whose glass doors are cut into arches, round brass knobs and a geometric brass mirror. Arches and circles repeat at small scale through the flat, so the rooms read as one family.

The kitchen is matt grey, with a quartz worktop, bronze-edged drawer fronts and a dark sink counter. Elsewhere, leaf-patterned wallpapers — one in soft grey, one in teal — meet dark timber and fluted panels, and a brass wall light with a glass globe sits beside a dark timber bed. Details are few but deliberate. Nothing asks for attention. That is the point.