Harmony of Space
March, 2019
On moving day, the owners didn’t have to worry that their couch wouldn’t fit through the door or how it would look in their generously sized living room. Their house was carefully planned down to how the furnishings would be accommodated in the space, taking the idea of custom home to the next level.
The owners are international people with a sense of European design. They wanted a home with clean architecture to create a backdrop for their more classic ornate antique pieces, says Amedeo Barbini of Barbini Design Build. He worked mostly with the wife, an artistic person and an artist, from floor plans to final details.
The main floor has 11-foot-high ceilings, windows that stretch almost from floor to ceiling and a symmetrical sensibility. Nine-foot-high doors were chosen to give a sense of proper scale to the main floor. “Eight-foot doors with 11-foot ceilings would look scrawny. It’s important that everything be properly proportioned, so along with the higher doors, higher baseboards were used,” he says.
The wood front door includes glass and wrought iron. It opens on to a bright hallway with classical Italian marble flooring that gives way to hardwood laid in a chevron design with detailing around the edges. “It’s very Versailles,” Amedeo says. “In old European palaces, this type of flooring was popular.” Walls, mouldings and baseboards are painted the same light neutral colour to create a calming Zen ambiance.