Designer Rina Singh on the beauty of living with what endures

I retraced my steps back to the front door and walked through again, this time deliberately. Now I noticed the tree in the yard, its branches threaded with bells and wind chimes, forming a canopy over a wooden bench and table. Inside, keys rested in a small wooden wall-mounted case with wrought iron detailing. Silver jewellery sat framed in old wood. Stoneware masks that grimace and smile hang above a sunlit living room corner. Jasmine buds filled woven baskets, scenting the air. Rugs were layered, textures repeated in cushions and cabinets alike. Copper vessels, terracotta fragments, plaster masks, figurines of birds, cows, gods, farmers—little worlds held behind glass and wood.

The showcases that line her home are not simply storage or display. They feel like quiet translations of a deeply familiar idea. In many rural homes, showcases once held a family’s world within them—objects gathered over time, each carrying a story of inheritance, belief, habit, or memory. These were not curated for effect, but accumulated through living. In Rina’s home, that instinct finds renewed expression: cabinets filled with curiosities that echo the same impulse to preserve, to remember, and to honour what has been lived.

Beautiful Homes: What does a typical morning look like for you at home?

Rina Singh: Sandeep and I are outdoors people, so most of the time we spend at home is actually spent outside. The first thing we do is our morning ritual where I take a lot of moringa leaves, boil them in water, and we drink half a cup each. Then we go out for our walk.

Sandeep works out in the park. I hang around, do my stretching, yoga, breathwork. That’s a good thirty-minutes. Then we come back home and sit here or in the backyard. Sometimes we sit in the front yard because it’s so beautiful. You have peacocks walking around. Balu, our dog,  loves to give us company in the morning. We just sit around and in his own way, he’s listening. He wants to know what’s happening in the world with us. It’s a quiet morning. We don’t rush through things. We live, breathe, and spend time in the house together.

BH: Do elements of your childhood, raised in a family of agriculturalists, still find a place in your daily rituals?

RS: I come from an agricultural background. My father is a farmer. So yes, a lot of my childhood was spent with nature as part of everyday routine. Plants in the kitchen, using natural elements from around us, honey from a beehive on a tree in the neighbourhood. Milk came straight from the animals in the house. It was a normal situation every day.

Even today, a lot of my rituals come from that experience. It is part of my sense of being. I still feel very grounded in those things. We get all our vegetables from a farm nearby. On Sundays, we go and spend time there. Sandeep is literally a gardener, so we spend time in nurseries picking plants. We pick our vegetables ourselves and bring back the supply for the week.

A lot of grounding comes from rituals. I'm used to cleaning leafy greens on Sundays, making concoctions for the week with ginger and turmeric, fermenting pickles and taking them up to the terrace to sit in the sunlight, and taking rugs upstairs. All of this is part of a way of living I experienced as a child.

BH: You’ve spoken about storytelling and memory as central to your design. Is there something in your home that reflects that?

RS: Everything you see in the house, these little objects we’ve collected over the years, they’re not things you find in art galleries. I collected them because there was a sense of familiarity. These are things I’ve used, things I’ve seen growing up, things that are not easily available anymore. I think what we store in memory is what we later recollect as beauty. What you want to buy, collect, decorate, save, whether it’s your home, studio, or even clothes, comes from a memory untouched by trends.

There’s a strong, tangible memory buried somewhere that you find beautiful. And that’s what you recreate. Not as one object, but as a whole world coming together. The Tara from a monastery in Ladakh, old rugs from someone else’s house–these are antique rugs. I feel like I’m buying a piece of memory from somewhere and transporting it here.

My house is filled with materiality, be it wood, metal, marble, stone, clay, wool, jute. Everything that exists in nature. I must have seen all this in my childhood. I’m just putting it together again because I know it’s beautiful.

BH: The showcases in your home feel particularly meaningful. Can you tell us about them?

RS: In North Indian households, especially in small towns like Kurukshetra or Ambala, showcases were everywhere. In my family home, you’d see awards, a big silver vase passed down generations, something brought back from travel because travel wasn’t frequent. These were things guests were meant to notice.