Two well-travelled people often bring together ideas from different places when building a home. These may include a courtyard they once visited, a material they admired or a colour that stayed with them. The challenge is to bring these influences together without making the house feel like a travel itinerary. Shivali Kalra and her husband wanted their home to reflect their experiences without making any one influence too obvious. Located in Bangalore, the 5,000-square-foot house brings together Japandi minimalism, the raw beauty of wabi-sabi and industrial elements. One entire floor draws from the Greek-Moroccan seaside aesthetic. Shivali shaped the interiors through her firm, Wellcraft Spaces, while Shraddha Kamath of Tangram handled the architecture. Despite its varied influences, the home feels cohesive, with each space expressing a different facet of the same design sensibility.

From Japandi Calm To Greek-Moroccan Charm Across A 5000 Sq Ft House | WellCraft Spaces

Very little in this house is what it first appears to be. The fireplace burns on water vapour, not flame, but reads as fire from across the room. The ceiling in the living room is a wood-plastic composite cut to resemble timber it isn’t. The staircase panelling is finished to look like stone it also isn’t. This was not a budget-driven decision. Shivali deliberately explored how convincingly a material could take on a character beyond its original identity.

The house follows a warm, predominantly beige palette, with distinct colour accents on each floor that create a visual narrative. Greenery, however, shaped the design from the outset. Shivali wanted to bring the outdoors in and ensure that every space offered a view of green. Planter beds line the first level, while a garden wraps around the eastern and western edges of the plot. Balconies and green pockets occupy the facade’s recessed areas, and glass openings on every elevation keep the garden in view. For a family moving from an apartment with their dog, this connection to nature meant more than an aesthetic choice. It reflected a change in how they wanted to live.

On the ground floor, a meandering wall greets the visitors. Only later does it reveal itself as the mandir’s reverse face. The living area rises to a double-height ceiling, anchored by a near-black stone-look floor. Lime-wash walls add texture and depth to the beige palette.

The dining area introduces a deliberate contrast through rough brick cladding and a table and chairs crafted from acacia wood. These tactile materials bring warmth and texture to the otherwise calm palette.

The open kitchen maintains the home’s restrained aesthetic while introducing a change in material. A green quartzite island adds colour to the clean lines of the laminated cabinetry. The chimney sits within the ribbed ceiling, keeping the cooking area visually uncluttered.

first floor

Upstairs on the first floor, a family lounge drops the formality altogether: low seating, a tatami mat underfoot, stone veneer panels behind the television.

Retreat inward, and each private quarter proves fluent in its own idiom. The master bedroom keeps to lime plastered walls and a rattan-laminate bed edged in wooden beading, with a low seating nook tucked beside it and a perforated screen absorbing the closet door.

Its walk-in wardrobe is arguably the more considered space of the two — an island counter at its centre, lit from above by a backlit alabaster panel doing the work of a skylight, as brass hardware warms an otherwise shaded laminate. 

A second bedroom, paired with a curved study that fronts the garden through a full-height glass wall, takes a more historically inflected route — blush pink and ivory instead of beige, as dentil moulding courses through the pelmet and behind the bed. The bed, like every bed in the house, was custom designed rather than sourced.

An Aristo partition separates the wardrobe from the sleeping area, while carefully placed mirrors make use of otherwise empty corners. In the guest room, forest green adds depth to the white palette. The design repeats the rounded motif seen at the entrance, using wallpaper along the curved edge behind the bed. A handmade painting completes the backdrop. A mustard chair adds warmth to the green palette, while an L-shaped window brings abundant natural light into the room.

The son’s space is built around what a child does in a room rather than what a room is supposed to look like: mint green walls, a play zone that climbs to sixteen feet, a round window set low beneath the steps, and wooden-look tile flooring chosen more for its ability to survive toddler wear. 

second floor

On the second floor, the house changes character entirely. The lexicon here is Greek by way of Santorini and Morocco — pale blue, white, stone-textured surfaces, and enough curves to soften a floor built primarily for entertaining. A lounge doubles as a home theatre, while the textured bar counter is backed by a mirrored splash and lit with enough brass to give it the slightly theatrical presence a room built for parties requires. 

Shivali was, by her own admission, was at times simultaneously the client, the designer, the contractor, the supervisor, and the procurement manager. “Rewarding and exhausting in equal measure,” she says — and the house, in every room, bears evidence of both. Her husband has claimed the deck, which overlooks a garden and water body he never had from an apartment; their young son favours his bedroom, where optical lights transform the ceiling into a starry sky. Shivali herself finds it difficult to choose. Which is, perhaps, the point. The home that is hardest to pick a favourite room in is the one that got everything right.

The Author is a Faculty at School of Design & Innovation, RV University, Bengaluru.

Fact File

Designed by: WellCraft Spaces

Project Type: Residential Architecture & Interior Design

Location: Bangalore, India

Year Built: 2025

Built-Up Area: 5000 Sq.ft

Principal Designer- Shivali Kalra

Photograph Courtesy: Nayan Soni

Text Courtesy: mehardeep_official

Firm’s Instagram Link: WellCraft Spaces

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