Pumpkin Spice Apartment / Oradea, Romania / 2023

Located in Oradea, this apartment was designed for a young family with a little kid. We chose lots of white, wood and sandy neutrals as a base palette to build upon and then played a bit with soft greens and blues (a combo that fully shows off in the kid’s room). Then added a bit of pumpkin spice in the mix with the colorful armchairs at the dining table and make-up table, to stir things up a little bit.

The kitchen is large, featuring an island that continues with a lower area for dining. There’s also a larger and more formal dining area in the living room, but we’ll get to that soon. Back to the kitchen: when I started working on this project, the main fixtures for the sink were already set and we couldn’t change them (it would have been too complicated and costly in this case). Therefore, the position is not ideal, in the sense that I personally would have preferred to have the sink closer to the fridge. But even so, it still works fine: might be a large kitchen, but the distance is manageable.

We brought a bit of color with the green tiles on the backsplash (I love how their irregular and glossy surface catches the light) and the chairs from Atelier September.

The living room went through a few layout options before settling on this final one. It had to include a sofa, a large dining table for family occasions, extra storage (the apartment has only one very small storage room) plus a work from home area with some shelves.

The winning option was the one that kept the space open, without any divisions between the many different functions required. This way, the space benefits as a whole from the generous natural light.

The home office, storage and TV area (currently used for artwork display) are all placed against the largest empty wall and continuing onto the hallway towards the kitchen. The furniture was designed as a whole piece, to have all these functions “flow” from one to another and to connect the living room with the hallway.

The back wall – the shorter one – is the one you see once entering the living room from the hallway and it’s used for artwork display to draw the eye (and some lower extra storage for the dining and office area).

The dining table takes up the empty spot in the middle of everything, having enough space around it to accommodate large family gatherings and to allow for every day free movement throughout the room. With its irregular oval shape it becomes a center piece in all senses.

Table and chairs are from Atelier September as well.

Moving on to the first bathroom, which follows the same white / wood combo, this time with a touch of blue for the tiles behind the double washbasin. Being a very long room, we used the washing machine and its encasing furniture as a space divider to obtain two areas: the washbasin right at the entrance vs the shower and toilet at the back. For the shower, we used a LED strip as a nice way to light up that corner. It’s washing the textured wall tiles and giving a warm and relaxing atmosphere

The kid’s room was designed to be functional for years to come, not just while he’s little. When he grows up and starts going to school, the play area and the lower furniture can be replaced with a small desk, while keeping the bed and wardrobe as is.

But this room had a difficult layout: we had around 2 or maybe 3 variants. In the end this was the winning one. We didn’t want to place the wardrobe by the window, because it would eat up half of the natural light. We couldn’t turn the bed at 90 degrees, because there wouldn’t have been enough space left to pass towards the balcony (and very little empty floor space for playing).

Therefore, we decided to place the bed by the window and separate it with a room divider that acts as a headboard, a nightstand, a bookcase, while it also permits the light to pass.

The master bedroom is elegant, yet pretty simple in design, giving out a sense of calmness. Bright colours, neutrals, with a slight pop of color in the make-up table armchair. To give the room a bit of personality, we added texture and rhythm to the bed’s white back wall by using 3D wall panels from Orac. There’s also a LED light surrounding the paneling, for a warm ambience in the evenings.

The second bathroom is also the master bathroom, with direct access from the bedroom. Here, we decided to use the same materials as in the other one to maintain a cohesion between spaces.

To enter this bathroom, you pass through the bedroom wardrobe. While the entrance is not completely hidden from view, it is though conceived as an integral part of the whole furniture.

Bathroom tiles and wood floors: Novambient

Chairs, sofa and main dining table: Atelier September

Construction team: Geologix