It's a new year, and we're back with our second
Ingeva Design Studio series! This month, we're sitting with Masooma, one of the wonderful designers at Landmark Homes. Learn Masooma's design style, her inspiration, and her great advice for home buyers!
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1. What’s your favourite room to stage in our show homes?
Primary Bedroom — this room can be truly personalized to the preferences of the home owner. We can use the right lighting, depending on how and when you want to wake up. The size of windows, lamps, ceiling light fixtures and blinds help the individual's needs. In addition, the right paint colour, flooring, and bedding all play a role in creating a haven where you escape from the world.
2. What is the best part about staging show homes?
Staging a house lets all your finishes, flooring, cabinets, plumbing, wall tiles, and lighting be centre stage. It brings a very gratifying warmth to all the living spaces and softens them up.
3. In three words, how would you describe your design style?
Transitional-remixed, Chic and Sophisticated.
4. What is a timeless interior finish for you?
Cabinets. I think all Ingeva designers have a great love affair with cabinets. It is traditionally the most expensive finish in the house and it is what we suggest clients start with. The rest of the finishes are usually easy to pick once we decide the colour or style of cabinets.
5. Where do you find inspiration?
Fashion, a great style idea can easily be translated from fashion to home design. Travelling also helps inspire great ideas.
6. What do you love about Ingeva?
I love that we not only help customize client houses to their unique needs and desires but also use our years of experience and training to help create stylized and chic houses that look like designer homes.
7. What is the biggest advice you can give homeowners for their one-on-one appointment?
Landmark Homes in collaboration with Ingeva Design gives the clients a unique opportunity to build a house which truly represents their taste. It goes a step further by having trained designers help provide panache to their house. So, I tell my clients to please share their stories and let us know how they want their house to look. With a little tweaking, we may be able to replicate the feature that you loved in your childhood home, or an arch you once saw in your travels that stayed with you.
8. What are your recommendations for flooring and cabinets for dark furniture?
If you have dark furniture, go with lighter flooring. This adds contrast and makes your house look bigger and brighter. For cabinets, it is your choice whether you want light or dark — neither negatively affect the overall look of the house, as long as the undertones of all the finishes match. If your furniture is cool toned, like grey or blue, make sure the cabinets are cool toned as well, and vice-versa; if the furniture is warm toned, like brown or red, you can easily pick your cabinet finish in earthy tones.
9. Lastly, show us a flat lay of finishes you would choose in your Landmark Home, and tell us why you picked them.
I went with a dark and moody yet elevated look. Done right, dark décor can be bold, dramatic and exciting. The trick is to use a lot of texture. 3D tiles on the walls, bold patterns and thick, soft area rugs all appeal to one's senses.
I started with black cabinets, as dark cabinets make a bold statement and are a perfect backdrop to lighter, more polished finishes. The gold metal cabinet hardware provides contrast but matches gold plumbing, gold interior door handles, and gold lighting to create a sense of cohesiveness.
Herringbone flooring is having a great revival and brings movement and character. The striking wallpaper with the hexagon honeycomb pattern is of a similar colour family as the rest of the finishes yet still stands out.
In order to save dark finishes from becoming gloomy, adding lighter coloured fabrics in area rugs, furniture, and drapes help enliven the space. Lastly, using the right lighting to provide illumination and shadows strategically makes everything perfect!
Thank you, Masooma, for your delightful answers and for giving awesome advice to home buyers! Got anything you want to ask? Submit your questions on any of our social media platforms and we may answer them next month!