Turns out elegant period details and contemporary color were a match made in heaven for this interior designer’s family home
LIVING ROOM
‘We found the abstract painting after we had chosen all the colours but it was such a perfect match for the furniture mix that we had to buy it,’ says owner Sarah.
DINING ROOM
‘We wanted to feel very cosy within this large space so used velvet and the calming shade of blue on the library wall,’ says Sarah.
KITCHEN
‘The material palette – brass, velvet, mahogany parquet and granite – makes it feel posh but cosy,’ says Sarah.
when Sarah Zaquine and her husband, Jacques, first set eyes on this swishy Paris apartment, its many charms were easy to spot: think impeccable proportions, lofty ceilings, elegant windows, ornate mouldings and a drop-dead gorgeous mahogany parquet f loor. So far, so good –but aside from its good bones, there was very little to admire. ‘It was all very functional, only what was needed, with no design or decoration,’ recalls Sarah. The layout, too, was horribly dated, with a small kitchen at the far end of the apartment, originally designed for servants to use and hidden away from the main rooms.
Sarah’s first step was to reconfigure the f loor plan for a 21st-century family’s needs, with the kitchen now sited in the former dining room, at the heart of the home, and the dining room repositioned in one of the two adjoining reception rooms. To one side of this main space, she created asuite of rooms for the couple: bedroom, dressing room, bathroom and study; while on the other side are the children’s bedrooms and bathrooms. ‘Our suite is like agrown-up apartment-within-an-apartment and the kitchen is much more convenient now, a friendly place to spend time with the kids,’ says Sarah.
Approaching the apartment as she would any of her design projects, Sarah made her husband he
