Designing For Daily Life: How Residential Interior Designers In Bangalore Are Rethinking Who A Home Is For
· Free Press Journal
Aishwarya Interiors, which has delivered more than 5,000 homes in the city since 2004, says the measure of a well-designed home is how it works on an ordinary weekday, not how it looks at the housewarming.
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As Bangalore's housing market moves towards larger apartments, villas and penthouses, residential interior designers in Bangalore are reporting a quiet but significant change in what homeowners ask of them. The emphasis, they say, is shifting from rooms designed to impress guests towards homes planned around the everyday routines of the people who live in them.
Aishwarya Interiors, a Bangalore studio founded in 2004 by Yogesh Deshmukh and Laxmi Deshmukh, has observed the change across its recent projects. The studio works only on residences and has delivered more than 5,000 homes across the city on an end-to-end basis.
“A housewarming tells you very little about whether a home has been designed well,” said Laxmi Deshmukh, Co-founder and Creative Director of Aishwarya Interiors. “We find out months later, in small remarks. A parent who no longer steps over school bags in the hallway. A grandparent who can finally reach their own shelf. That is the real review of our work.”
From display to daily use
For much of the past two decades, the most expensive decisions in many Bangalore homes were made with visitors in mind: formal living rooms that saw little use, dining tables sized for occasional gatherings, and display units built to be admired. Designers say that balance is changing as families stay longer in their homes and expect more from them.
Hybrid working, multi-generational households and children studying at home have made space more precious in even the largest apartments. Homeowners are increasingly asking how a room will be used at seven in the morning, not only how it will appear in photographs.
“Beauty is the point of what we do,” Ms Deshmukh said. “But beauty that serves only the first impression is decoration, not design. The questions that matter most rarely appear in a portfolio. Who wakes first? Where do the shoes go? Who works from home, and on which days?”
The brief comes before the design
At Aishwarya Interiors, every project begins with a detailed client questionnaire covering routines, family members, working patterns and storage needs before any concept is drawn. The studio then moves through mood boards, detailed models, personalisation and approval before execution begins.
“Clients sometimes find the questionnaire unexpectedly long,” Ms Deshmukh said. “They come to us for ideas, and we give them homework. But most of the design happens in those answers. A floor plan shows us where the walls are. Only the family can tell us how they move between them.”
The studio's focus on residential work is deliberate. It designs apartments, villas and penthouses only, an approach it says allows the team to concentrate on the particular demands of home interior design, from the needs of older relatives to the way storage, light and circulation shape family life.
Personalisation that is felt, not seen
Industry observers note a parallel shift in how luxury is defined. In luxury apartment interiors and villa interiors alike, clients are moving away from statement pieces and towards restraint, honest materials and details tailored to the household.
“The most personal thing in a home is often invisible,” Ms Deshmukh said. “A drawer at exactly the right height. A light that switches on where your hand already is. A window seat placed where the afternoon sun falls. Two families in the same tower, with identical floor plans, should end up with homes that could never be mistaken for each other.”
She added that show-flat aesthetics, while appealing, are designed to sell a building rather than to suit a particular household, and that many families now arrive with a clearer sense of how they want to live rather than how they want a home to look.
Accountability from design to handover
The change in expectations has also strengthened demand for turnkey interior design, in which a single studio takes responsibility for design, manufacturing, installation and handover. Aishwarya Interiors undertakes only end-to-end projects, a model it says ensures that what is planned around a family's routines is also what is built.
For homeowners comparing residential interior designers in Bangalore, Ms Deshmukh's advice is to pay attention to the questions a designer asks. “If the first conversation is only about styles and finishes, steer it towards your mornings,” she said. “A designer who wants to know how you live is a designer who intends to design for you.”