A Courthouse Apartment in Japandi Calm

When a lawyer couple inherited 2,400 square feet of formal, chandeliered rooms in a 90s Gulshan courthouse building, they asked for exactly one thing: light. What they got — over nine weeks and one very patient design process — was a home that breathes.

"We entertained the idea of moving," says Tania, who shares the apartment with her husband Reza and a suspicious quantity of books. "But the bones were good. The light, once we stopped fighting it, was extraordinary. We just needed the room to stop shouting."

Editing, Not Decorating

Our brief was Japandi without the clichés — no performative minimalism, nothing that demands to be photographed. Nusrat's first move was subtractive: down came the heavy drapery, out went a wall of dark cabinetry. What remained was a shell of warm white and raw plaster that changes character hourly with the sun.

The Pieces That Made the Room

The living area centres on two Kumo lounge chairs in ivory bouclé — the couple's one indulgence — anchored by a travertine coffee table that took six weeks to source. The rug is a hand-knotted Gabbeh in vegetable-dyed rust, the single moment of colour in an otherwise tonal room. "It's the dog's favourite thing in the house," Reza notes, "which is the highest praise furniture gets."

In the dining room, a decision not to match: six velvet chairs in cinnabar around a plain oak table, under a single alabaster pendant. "Deco discipline," Nusrat calls it — one gesture, made well.

What We'd Tell Anyone Starting Out

Live in the room before you fill it. Buy the rug first — it sets the acoustics and the palette whether you plan it or not. And keep one wall bare; every home needs somewhere for the eye to rest.

The apartment now does what the best Japandi rooms do: it makes ordinary evenings feel considered. "We eat at that oak table every night," Tania says. "It still feels like a small event."