The Globetrotting Indian — a 7,700 sq ft Mumbai duplex

Project · Mumbai

The Globetrotting Indian

A four-bedroom duplex of 7,700 sq ft looking out over the Arabian Sea, for a couple who travel constantly and wanted to come home to something unmistakably Indian. The brief asked for two things that usually pull against each other: national pride and international ease — with, as the owners put it, a little eccentricity allowed.

The problem

Homes built for people who travel a lot tend to go one of two ways. They become hotel-like, smoothed down to something inoffensive, or they become a souvenir cabinet. Neither gives you the thing you actually want after a long flight, which is the feeling of arriving somewhere specific.

The approach here was to let Indian craft carry the identity and let the planning stay calm. Strong, particular pieces in every room; restraint in the palette that holds them together.

Arrival

The entrance sets the tone before anything else gets a chance to. A Garuda sculpture, chequered floor tiles and a chandelier hung deliberately low — low enough that you notice the ceiling and slow down. Transitional spaces are usually treated as corridors to get through. Treated as rooms, they change how the whole house reads.

The stairwell continues it: a framed Suzani, a red leather trunk, a patterned wallpaper, brass, an earthen pot. A landing doing the work of a gallery.

Living, dining and the bar

The open living-dining runs muted, which is the decision that lets everything else be loud. Against it sit a Peacock Life dining table and sofa, a coffee table, a mirror lit from either side, wooden candle stands and a ceiling light. The bar takes a different register altogether — British-style veneer, exposed wooden beams, a marble floor and a Tanjore painting, closer to a club than a living room, which is the point of a bar.

The study is panelled in veneer with a wooden ceiling, a leather-topped table and wooden blinds. Somewhere to actually work rather than a desk placed in a bedroom.

The bathrooms, where the craft is

The two powder bathrooms are the most technically interesting rooms in the house. One is finished in charcoal with Rajasthani thikri work — hand-cut mirror set into the surface — used in a deliberately untraditional layout, so the effect is less palace and more night sky. The second is built from thick carved marble slabs worked into the form of a lotus.

Thikri is normally seen in heritage interiors and it is easy to make it look like pastiche. Used against charcoal paint in a small modern bathroom, it stops being a quotation and becomes a material.

What Peacock Life supplied

Across the house: the entrance console and chair; the stairwell round table, framed Suzani and tabletop decor; in the living-dining, the dining table, ceiling light, mirror and mirror lights, candle stands, sofa, coffee table and artefacts; the Tanjore painting, bar chair and tabletop light; the master bed and bedside table; and custom mirrors, hanging lights and wall art in both powder bathrooms and the den washroom.

Almost all of it was made to order, which is what made the room-by-room specificity possible in the first place. When the sizes are yours to set, a piece can be built for a wall rather than placed against it.

This write-up is our own. For the full photo essay and the editor’s account of the house, read the Elle Decor India feature.