Apartment with Predominance of Green Color, Kitchen Tiles Brought from All Over the World and a “Moo” Bathroom

The Hosts:
Marina, an interior designer
Boris and Artyom, her kids

Number of rooms: 5
Metric area: 150 m²
Ceiling height: 3 m
Floor number: 3

Tempted by a brainy habitat of a newly-built neighborhood in the south of Moscow, the family moved in there about a year ago.

At the moment of purchase the lodging represented an L-type concrete block with no internal partitions and with windows overlooking opposite sides of the building – a park, a playground and a busy avenue. Renovation took about 9 months – much of which is owed to the real estate developer’s rules: working gangs were not allowed to live in apartments, and their works had to be held in strictly fixed hours.
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Architectural and interior plans were fully and without any problems worked out by the hostess, a professional interior designer.

So that the space was organized in a most reasonable way, Marina noted down a detailed sequence of all actions carried out by each inhabitant of the flat. This list takes account of all micro-details, up to who sits down where to fasten shoe-laces. For each room and each thing mapped out were appointed functions. This try to do something new, which cannot be always implemented in Marina’s job, enabled a most effective utilization of space.

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A nice example is an attempt to forgo central ceiling lighting by hiding lamps in recesses. One more desire was an option of regulating lighting level. These dicey, still well-proved, undertakings were successfully implemented by means of Korean illuminating system Feelux. One more contribution to convenience are dusk to dawn sensors and nightlights.

A storage system was well-thought from the very beginning, ensuring maximum openness of the living space. The apartment includes two utility rooms, one of which is located to the left.

Though preference was given to neutral color range, depending on the lighting complicated tints manifest themselves in different ways. For instance, the lounge wall color is called greige – this is something between grey and beige. All the paints made in interior décor belong to Benjamin Moore brand, which is Marina’s favorite for its special palette of secondary colors.

A kitchen set by Varenna was picked up as a match to the wall color.

Thanks to brick masonry used for wall décor, its color looks even deeper and more patterned.

A set of figured kitchen tiles from all over the world was long and on every occasion collected by Marina and her friends. Now it does good in the cooking zone. By the way this neat mosaic wasn’t laid in a blink: all the pieces had different sizes and arranging them on the wall was no easy task. Still, the workers proved to be real masters.

Upholstered furniture from Italy was ordered as a match to the walls and with a plan to set accents by means of small details.

Motley curtains by Voyage (Baboushka line) is in key with the tiling.

The rest of the furniture was custom-designed from the owner’s drawings: thereby she managed to create her perfect system for storing books, souvenirs and personal stuff.

The closet is Marina’s pride. Opposite the brick wall she wanted to see exclusively French lattice doors. Hidden behind them is different small-stuff: non-essential toys, buttons and other notions.

All the details were gathered one by one to create a single puzzle in the end.

A few decorated grips perfectly blended with the kitchen tiling, so the hostess bought another few in India for her lattice closet.

Since it was decided to do without any thresholds, different zones of the flat were floored with natural oak and covered with ecological oil by Osmo.

A large bathroom was faced with patterned tiles creating the feeling of continuously running water.

Color solution for a tight bedroom was grey and white: a projector hangs over the bed and the opposite wall perfectly copes with a task of being a screen. Thanks to a special tint of grey by Tikkurila the image is extremely clear.

Bed — Baxter.

Concealed 2.4-meter doors melting into the background were ordered from Italy. Another bonus of this simple trick is visual lifting of ceilings, which had to be lowered for building in the ventilation system.

Chequered tiling was used for finishing the kid’s bathroom. Though the primary plan was to make the walls absolutely neutral, white, Marina suddenly fell in love with a line of German tiling Mooh. Thanks to it, a cow bought years ago in Italy found a good match.

Décor and color ideas were drawn from many, sometimes unexpected, sources. Thus, the kid’s room was inspired with plane-tree: its trunk is colored in many tints of green.

A problem of unsanctioned kid’s creativity and alternating posters was solved by means of common cork material.

Grey floor and blue walls of the study are inspired by dusty industrial rooms.

The lodging is heaped up with stools, which started as a hobby. Marina ordered this very shape from her father, who can’t stand idleness, and it proved to be really convenient: it’s impossible to overturn them. The hostess spent evenings gluing the stools with versatile press-clippings and pictures, and gradually started to duplicate them and sell from her Internet shop.