Home Tour - A Tropical Sanctuary!

Mishta's art work (that's right!) hangs proudly on her gallery wall.

Verdant courtyards, colorful Portuguese influences and the home owner’s discerning aesthetic strokes are just a few of the many highlights of Mishta and Anirudh’s cultured and curated home in the heart of a city that I fondly call home – Bengaluru, India. 

Tropical colors and spanish tiles greet visitors at the entrance!

Aalayam readers, it is with great pleasure that I bring you a home from home ! One that kindles the senses with its allure!

 It is a labor of love filled with Mishta and Anirudh’s globe trotting treasures and impeccable taste! One look at the luscious green spaces that blend seamlessly with the light 
and airy indoors and you will want to move in and call this your home! What can I say – this home is a  tropical sanctuary par excellence!  

Previously, the home has been featured on BBC Good Homes, Inside Outside, Deccan Chronicle, Good House Keeping, Ideal Home and Garden and Rang Décor Blog. Yes, it is that good! 

I love the play of light and shadows on this tiled porch - don't you?

Today, I am proud to tell Mishta and Anirudh’s home story - the Aalayam way! 

Thank you for sharing your jewel of a home with all of us. Thank you also to my dear friend Pooja for introducing me to Mishta and making this home tour possible!

House proud - Mishta and Anirudh!

Mishta was great fun to work with! I walked into her home (virtually via Facebook) and stood there with my mouth wide open! This is the kind of home that would totally engage even a stranger! I could not stop looking at the beautiful images of her home staring at me from my FB screen. And then, I sent her a mountain of questions! I had to! I wanted to know everything about how this beautiful home came to be! I am sure Mishta had no clue what she was signing up for when she agreed to do this for Aalayam but she obliged cheerfully. I connected with her warm and ebullient personality in an instant and I knew then that the home was an absolute extension of her diligence and energy. The time difference meant that we would catch each other at ungodly hours and anybody who can inject a little humor into a conversation even at 12.30 am when they are in the middle of a late night feed for their child is worth getting to know and I am glad I did! I deeply cherish the alliances that Aalayam allows me to make.

Layered with love!

Below is our conversation on home and décor with insights from Mishta's keen home making sense. Mishta and Anirudh share this space with darling daughter Mohini fondly called Mou and their furry feline! Mishta’s home has been featured in several print and online media before but Aalayam  holds the bragging rights for  being the first to share pictures of Li’L Mou’s room! Yay!!

Check out the French Calligraphy announcing Mou's Room - The devil is in the details!

 Sit back and let the images take you to a  kaleidoscopic tropical retreat. Diwali will be here soon and it is that time of the year when we all want to spruce up our homes and get into the festive spirit. Allow yourself to be inspired by this magical space!

One of the three courtyards in the house. Leaving the city behind.....

What makes your home "your home"?

M:  Our home is a home because we live in it :) !  We don’t believe in having a showpiece museum at the cost of living, but having said that, we’re naturally neat people and we take pride in our efforts to make the house look beautiful and lived in at the same time. Our daughter is being taught from a very young age to put away her toys after she finishes playing so no Lego underfoot here!

Global treasures find a place in their home and heart!

A lot of us stop at designing/decorating our interiors but you seem to have prioritized decorating your outdoor spaces too! Tell me about your love for the green spaces in your home.

M:  A few trips to Bali and Sri Lanka changed the way we viewed the outdoors in personal space forever, the blurring of the inside and the outside and to seamlessly blend the two. The sense of peace in the morning, sitting in the courtyard, looking at the plants and breathing in the fresh air is a luxury that we cannot do without anymore! The emphasis on the outdoors, and a laid-back approach to living is what defines our home.

Does the decor in your home fit the bill for any one particular style - if so, what drove you to that style?

M: ‘Tropical’ is what we are aspiring to…the cool shades of greenery and warm color schemes equate living in this space to living in a dream.  The design of the house really allows us to experience all of nature up close and feel at peace any time of the day and it reminds us of our beloved Bali and Goa at each corner.

Who calls the design shots in your home? 

M: We both do. Anirudh holds the rights to more practical solutions while I lean towards the more whimsical.

How does your personal decor style influence your work professionally or the other way around? 

Since we’re both visual/ergonomic designers, it has definitely affected the way we see spaces and colours. Tropical decor is vibrant with lively overtones and both our personalities resonated well with that. Mishta is a graphic designer from Central Saint Martins. Her company is called Drawater by Mishta Roy while Anirudh is an ergonomist from Georgia Tech; a technical design consultant for technology companies.  

What are your favorite places to shop for your home? Are you budget savvy or would you rather own pieces that truly strike a chord with you even if they are expensive? 

M: We decorate our home with pieces we have purchased all over the world on our travels. We once shipped large Balinese doorway guardian statues all the way from Bali and enormous birdcages from another trip! We don’t ever shop for anonymous pieces. They have to mean something to us and be associated with an experience/memory/geography/childhood. 

Where do you draw your online inspirations from - any favorite resources that you can share?

M: Inhabitot for now for Mou’s room, Rang Décor, Indian Summer, Kaleidoscope.

Mou's room - Magical and merry!

 * My absolute favorite response – this to me sums up how and why this is such a gorgeous home *

Are there influences from your home state (west Bengal/Calcutta) in your décor or have you stuck to southern influences of your adopted state/city (Karnataka/ Bangalore)? How are the two different in your opinion? 

M: The house inadvertently has mirrored my grandmother’s house in Alipore, Kolkata. Three bedrooms in three distinct color schemes…pink room, green room and blue room. As well as the grandfather clock that chimes melodically every 15 minutes… we got a Seiko that sounds the same as my grandmother’s clock! The library was inspired by Anirudh’s grandfather’s extensive collection and we designed the floor to ceiling bookshelves to mirror that. So I would say that our home is not so much inspired by our cultures, but rather by our childhood memories of happy spaces.

How is your adorable daughter influencing your home décor process now – tell me a little bit about creating kid friendly spaces.

M: She is influencing us through necessary childproofing…so a lot of furniture has moved around and safety gates installed. The green room has been turned into her playroom which is circus themed. I wanted to give her an environment that was colorful, propagated a love for animals and strong women who fly(!), so no pink princesses here!

Pick one room and tell us how it came about – what did you buy first, how did you keep adding till you said this is it. Did you envision the look before hand or was it done on the fly?

M: How did it come together so well? It evolved...but was determined right at the beginning by the color of the wall..ie pink room has fabrics which are soft florals always so it compliments the color. The furniture too is delicate. So it is a fairly feminine, peaceful room and so my glass perfume bottle collection has a home here. Blue room is the master bedroom and has strong indigo flavors, so the furnishings and furniture compliment that.

delicate wind swept block print fabrics add to the romance!

What’s next for your beautiful home? 

M: A swing! The perfect indoor/outdoor swing has been eluding me for awhile!

And because I love this wall, her art work, that chest and those bird cages so much..... 

One simple thing – a swing, she says!  This is yet another reminder of the fact that it takes patience and perseverance to create the home of your dreams.

 Anirudh and Mishta, decided to build over Anirudh’s family home’s existing ground-floor bungalow and Mishta says “ We wanted something different, something that reflected our love for travel and nature and blurred the lines between inside and outside. A house that was inward-facing and left the city out,while creating a peaceful oasis that we could enjoy privately”

They have accomplished that and more, don’t you think?

Thank you for joining us on this home tour. Please leave your comments and questions for Mishta. Tell us if you are inspired by this space. Our home owners, who graciously share their homes with all of us, would love to hear from you.

Next up, the post that you and I have both waited for – Aalayam's Diwali post! Yes, it is now an annual Aalayam tradition and I am all excited to bring you sparkling inspirations to ignite your festive fervor! Join me next week for Diwali décor inspirations!

Cheers!

~Deepa

P.S: All images belong to the home owners – Mishta and Anirudh and may not be used without permission.