What Shade Is Your Brown

Published in Inside Outside August 2008
Brown is the color of soul food. Brownies, brown bread, plum cake, dark chocolate, beer… How will it be if various shades of brown – auburn, burgundy, sepia, ochre, rust, mahogany and other such come together to create a ‘taste’fully done up living space? Delicious? Yummy? Delectable? With a home designer like Hameeda Sharma of AH Associates, Hyderabad, at the helm of affairs, this space gets transformed into more than just awesome. It is practical, comforting, urbane, sophisticated and above all, spells class - just what the owner of G-2, a big business tycoon who loves to keep a low profile wanted, for his second floor guesthouse at Trendset Vantage, Banjara Hills. It may be a sheer coincidence, but brown in color psychology (representing Earth, mud etc) is associated with rewinding and rejuvenating oneself. Bang on for a guesthouse.
The spacious 3,000 sq feet apartment is an exercise in thoughtfulness. The décor and design elements are not just for looks, but for comfort and practicality as well. Take the wooden ledge in the foyer. Most would think it is for a décor niche. “It’s to sit and put on your shoes on an average day and as a candle holder for an evening party,” says Hameeda Sharma. Incidentally, the wooden panels on the foyer wall deftly cover up the electrical fittings fro the entire house. In the dining space, the marble countertop is not just to put on some brass jugs but to convert it as a buffet counter for an impromptu luncheon. Ditto with the luggage racks in each of the guest bedrooms!
“This is a guesthouse and we don’t expect our guests to stuff in their huge suitcases into the wardrobe. So there is a provision for a knee length table that facilitates easy usage of the suitcase without having to bend all the way down.” Interestingly, the luggage rack has steel protuberances to make it easy to put it, pull in front and back and remove it without any pressure on the handle. “Luxury is not just about duvet beds and mercerized bed linen, but about little details that make it easy for the guest without them having to disturb the host,” says Hameeda. She says the brief for the house was that guests should go back home wanting to come back here again ASAP!
However, there were a few issues that definitely seemed like sore thumbs while designing the house. First, the house enjoyed no view of the outside. Second, a prime window of a bedroom was overlooking a walking corridor. “A playful bamboo lattice in the balcony offsets the lack of view from the backyard. The bedroom with a window overlooking the corridor has been suitably compensated with such interesting and innovative lights and lamps that they wouldn’t bother opening the window instead spend time admiring the flickers from the stenciled table lamp or the Olympic ring showpiece on the wall,” quips Hameeda.
The apartment has three bedrooms, a spacious living room, a bar, kitchen, dining space and an entertainment room. The living room which houses the bar has been designed in such a way that the various spaces – dining, main seating, secondary seating etc all seamlessly connect with each other to allow the guests in a party walk into each other for a conversation. At the same time, the rooms are all tucked in private corners neatly to ensure privacy to the inmates of the rooms.
Color co-ordination was the real challenge as the apartment has various zones. Each zone had to stand out yet have the same thread across. “Brown seemed to be the apt choice as there was a host of choices in this color. So if its chocolate brown in the hallway, it’s walnut brown in the dining, it is classic wood brown in the main bedroom. Some of the rooms have such precise co-ordination, you’d think the room was accessorized first and then painted. “The painting of the eye in the master bedroom and the cream laundry basket are sheer coincidences,” laughs Hameeda about the décor co-ordination.
The entertainment room is certainly the star of the house. With burnt orange décor and seriously sensuous wooden ledges sitting pretty to hold in the remote controls, chords and the sockets for the electronic gadgetry, the room looks techno, almost as though you were sitting in a high-end recording theatre. The wooden flooring ensures there are fewer echoes when the music goes on.
To give the eye an easy view of the various niches of the house, the accessories have been deliberately chosen in symmetric geometric shapes. For instance, a regular round or oblong lamp is replaced with a neat, straight cut, tall rectangular lamp shade. Elsewhere, a staid handcrafted one gives way to dramatic, stenciled meshed up lampshades. Of course, Hameeda confesses to using several camouflage techniques to cover up some boring walls. “In the dining space, we were left with an odd stretch of wall adjoining the hand wash space. Instead of cluttering up the little space with paintings and accessories, we simply used gracious blue wallpaper on the wall with accent lighting. As a central focal point, a hanging lampshade has been used.” The small space looks bigger than it is, thanks to the mirror on the hand wash unit.
The centre of the house is the vantage point from where you can soak in the browns of the house in one go. From the brown wood flooring at the main seating to the brown on the wall painting opposite the bar, G-2 is a harmony of burgundy, auburn and other delectable shades. What the brownies, brown plum cake, dark chocolate is to your soul, these browns are to your eyes. ‘Taste’fully done up, right?