A Noida duplex that’s also a home office and artist’s studio

Beautiful Homes (BH): You and your husband found the home appealing for two distinct reasons. Did your aesthetic also diverge when it came to designing the house?

Neha Sahai (NS): We are poles apart in terms of our taste. I have always said he’s more of a Chanel No. 5 kind of person, while I’m more ‘desi gulab’. For me, because I’ve grown up around pahads and jungles, I always wanted to be surrounded by greenery and the warmth of wood. I wanted a place where you could curl up, read a book and just be. My husband has always liked English architecture, very British things, and he wanted to bring that element into the space. The outcome is this space, which our friends find unique. Of course, every home is [unique], but I think ours is because of our contrasting tastes.

BH: How did you go about planning the overall look, the colours and materials, for instance?

NS: When we finalised the house back in 2022, it was a bare shell. Only the walls were whitewashed, but that was all. We love wood, which we have used liberally throughout the space. Now we don’t have a single cemented wall left. Everything has a layer of wood, including the ceiling, flooring and the walls. Even the staircase, which was originally in steel, is now in wood.

I also wanted to use green, but I didn’t want it to be too overpowering. I opted for sage green, a colour that has stayed since my designing days, when I was working for Anita Dongre. This was in 2014, when we did a prêt Indian wear collection in sage green. At the time, I’d made up my mind to use it whenever I did my own house. For the ground floor, my husband wanted black, but that didn’t go down well with other family members, so that was vetoed. The closest we could find was a dark blue. 

BH: How did you plan the break up of rooms across the duplex?

NS: We jokingly say that the first floor is mine and the ground floor is my husband’s. The first floor is more lively, more fun. I’ve decorated it with a lot of flowers. In terms of rooms, there is a bedroom, my studio and kitchen, because I needed that to be close to my studio. My husband mostly works from home, so the ground floor has his office, another bedroom and a living room.
 

BH: What about your studio? Did the design and décor for it flow from the rest of the house?

NS: In fact, a couple of months ago, I realised the walls in my studio had to be neutral. When I paint my bigger pieces, ones that are around eight feet high, I pin my canvas on the wall to work on it. And when you are looking at a wall, its colour does subconsciously influence your work. I didn’t want that. So now it is a neutral white.

BH: Building on that, what are the things that influence your work, and things you like having around?

NS: I read a lot, and while it’s difficult to pinpoint if a certain book has impacted my work, the influence is certainly there. I recently started reading more about spirituality, and I found myself drifting towards painting devis and really strong yoga poses, because that for me is powerful. Another thing is music. Generally, it’s a combination of three things—it might start with 1950s Bollywood, slowly move into jazz and then to Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia. I also try to have flowers around. And finally, there’s the light—it needs to be natural light. We get good light in the afternoon; that’s when I try and paint.