The house
Decor for the Indian home & table
A house dresses itself before it welcomes anyone. This is where we keep what we do to the rooms we live in — colour laid at the threshold, a quiet corner kept for worship, and a table set so that an evening has somewhere to begin.
Where to start
Decorating the Indian home
Some things in an Indian house are decoration and something more at once. The rangoli at the door is drawn to be beautiful and to welcome whoever arrives. The pooja room is a small architecture of attention. Both are made by hand, out of ordinary things, and both are meant to be used rather than kept.
We decorate the way the house has always decorated — in the materials at hand, without a designer. Rice flour, coloured powder, marigold, a brass diya, a shelf left clear. It is unhurried work, and it is the kind that a room remembers.
The doorway
Rangoli Designs
The floor art laid at the door for festivals and celebrations — the names it goes by across India, the materials it is made from, and a simple way to make one at home.
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The quiet corner
Pooja Room Design
A dedicated space for worship, whether that is a whole room in a house or a shelf or cabinet mandir in an apartment, with the placement guidance tradition offers.
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Set the table
Decor is mostly the table
A house is dressed for the people in it, and most of that happens at the table. A clean cloth, a brass tumbler, a small bowl of flowers, and something cooking that the whole room can smell — that is the decoration an Indian home is actually known for.
When the decor is done, we cook. Our recipes carry the dishes we set on that cloth, each with the music we would play while the pot is on.
The mood
Give the room a sound
Decorating goes faster with something playing, and the finished room holds a mood better when the mood was there first. We keep a long, unhurried catalogue for exactly this — the hour of tidying, arranging and lighting the lamps.
From the channel
Decorate to our latest
A long-form set for the unhurried hour of arranging the house before the guests arrive.