A First Flat, On A First Flat’s Budget

A first flat, bought with essentially everything the owner had, and an interiors budget of what remained, which was not much. The instinct in that position is to spread it thinly and do a little everywhere, and it reliably produces a home that looks uniformly underfunded.

So we concentrated it. Nearly the whole budget went into two things: the lighting scheme, which changes how every surface in a flat reads, and a single wall of well-made joinery in the living room that the eye lands on when you walk in. Everything else is plain emulsion, off-the-shelf fittings, and restraint. It does not look like a flat that was done cheaply. It looks like a flat where somebody made decisions.