This is how the conversation goes when my husband and I go to buy anything for our home.

Wife: “The sofa’s too big for our living room.”

Husband: “But it’s soft and comfortable to watch TV. How about the white one -  looks and feels good?”

Wife:  ”High maintenance. Will get dirty. Chalo, let’s check out some place else.” And the weekend saga continues….

Buying furniture is not a life altering decision but don’t most of us act like it is And it can take eons to settle on the perfect corner table, often buying the first one we set our eyes on, but only after we’ve scoured a dozen other shops, right?

But here’s a duo who have patiently sat through hundreds of such conversations between couples, waiting to pick up the conversation after the dust settles, and encouraging them make to make the right choice.  Welcome to Soulscape. Meet Shweta Gupta and her team.

Located on 12th Main Indira Nagar, not too far from the iconic 100 feet road, is a contemporary lifestyle store called Soulscape.  Started four years back, the brand has carved a niche for itself in its segment. When I asked Shweta what the segment was, she had an interesting reply, ” it’s somewhere in between the premium luxury range and the one that caters to masses. “ And, that’s quite a big segment going by the size of the urban middle class with a deep passion to deck up their abodes tastefully.

I visited the store and came back inspired. Here’s a quick low-down on the store, its decor, and offerings.

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We’ve been apartment hunting for the past two months. The apartment where we live currently has more pluses than minuses: practical utilization of space within the apartment, ample lighting and cross-ventilation, large rooms, functional amenities within the property, great location for public transport, highly convenient for groceries, reputed schools within a 3 Km radius, hospitals, well-maintained public parks, and is safe. The only reason we’re looking to move is because I would like to have a small space for indulging my green thumb and more open area for our son to play. Having looked at 27 odd old and new apartments/row houses/villas over 8 weeks, we’re on the verge of taking a break now. This would be our second apartment, so the expectations are high. And, it’s a little strange but true that we will need to spend double the price of our current apartment to get a new one, and still not get one which is satisfactory.

But, I’m very glad we did this exercise for I’ve learned a lesson or two in design by looking at all those tastefully decorated model apartments. Those perfect living spaces got me thinking: what if we spend just a fraction of the amount set aside for buying a new house and transform the interiors of the apartment we live in currently? We may fall in love with this place all over again…who knows? I may find new ways to pursue gardening indoors - with more varieties of houseplants in balcony, indoors and the utility area.

Have you ever fallen for a property with a bad floor plan but great model apartment? There was this apartment which had a kitchen to your left as soon as you entered and another one that opened to a guest bedroom.  So, I prefer seeing the floor plan first before falling for the interiors.

If you are planning to design the interiors of your new apartment or redoing the one where you live in, here are few tips that could be of help:

Crisp mustard yellow curtains to match other furnishings

Curtains:

1. Replace the rods. Or better yet, hide them if you can, like in the picture above.
2.Take the curtains all the way up to the ceiling. High curtains give the illusion of high ceiling. If you have a false ceiling, the top of the curtains can go behind.
3. Try sheer curtains for contemporary/modern furniture and heavy silk curtains for solid wood/teak/antique furniture.

4. Experiment with different fabric/material like a old silk sari or bright cotton sari/dupatta to make a blind or curtain.

Let the light come in - sheer curtains

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“dress your home” turns exactly a month young tomorrow.  So it was a pleasant surprise for it to be featured among the best 9 Indian interior design blogs. All you folks at blog adda, thanks for the recognition!

Among other news, it’s been a harrowing time here as this site went offline for over 15 hours last evening. Many of you would have been greeted by the much dreaded “404 Page not found error”. There was a hardware crash and the service providers tried their best to restore as much data as they could. I almost lost many of  my posts and your valuable comments; I spent the whole morning trying to recover as much as I could. Later in the afternoon, much to my delight, the hosting providers were able to restore the data fully. So it was 4 hours of lost effort but all’s well that ends well. And, I’ve learnt an important lesson - to back up posts and comments. After all those years in IT, I should’ve known better

I value your comments and thrive on your feedback. What is it that you’d like to be featured here? Got any questions? Over to you all…ask a question / leave a comment.