The designers made a convenient redevelopment, combining the kitchen and living room, and visually expanded the typical space using the color palette and decoration.
Designers from the Carton Group studio designed an apartment for a young family with a child. The clients manage departments in a large IT company and purchased their first shared apartment within walking distance from the office. Their choice was a brick house built in 1970, so some design decisions were dictated by structural features. The interior was based on the Scandinavian style, which was made more dynamic and rich in colors.
The apartment had an outdated layout with low ceilings and shabby renovations. Therefore, the changes were significant – the kitchen was combined with the living room, the bathroom was expanded, and a dressing room was designed between the living rooms. We developed a single design code for the entire space: light walls and ceilings, spot bright accents, black and white tiles in wet areas and light engineered boards in living areas. Thanks to this decoration, the apartment seems larger and the ceilings higher.
“At the planning stage, we realized that the original small-sized kitchen could only perform the function of storing and preparing food, so we tried to make maximum use of all the space to accommodate the necessary equipment and storage systems. The configuration of the room determined the choice of a custom-made set of individual sizes, say the authors of the project. “At the same time, on five squares we were able to not only place all the necessary equipment – from a stove with an oven and a dishwasher to a refrigerator, but also left a small place for sitting on the windowsill. With a little storage space underneath, near the battery, of course.”
It was important for the customers to use the most natural and hypoallergenic materials possible, including solid oak window sills, a wooden slab table, engineered wood, hypoallergenic wall paint and fabric stretch ceilings.
The living room serves as both a dining room and a sitting area with TV. Vertical lines of cabinets and wooden slats visually increase the height of the ceilings. The built-in closet in the hallway is designed to store books and board games, and the closet in the dining room acts as a buffet.
“Since one of the main tasks facing us was the visual expansion of the space, it is worth mentioning separately about lighting: each room has main light and a lot of additional light – in the form of contrasting black spots, table lights and sconces. The style of the lamps helped to “highlight” the functional areas and emphasize the play of contrasts,” say the designers.
The nursery was designed for growth. The abundance of open shelves will allow you to store different things – now these are toys and books, later there may be collectible figurines, stationery and textbooks. A magnetic marker board will allow you to both draw and solve the first problems, and a small bed can one day be replaced with a loft bed with a more spacious workspace.
It was very difficult to organize a bathroom that would meet modern needs with a washing machine and a cabinet for storing household chemicals; as a result, the bathroom was expanded to include a corridor.
Photo of the apartment before renovation
