Milan - Noto 10

Material and colour for a mini apartment in Milan

An office, linear and neutral, is converted into a home and made welcoming through a play of colours, coverings and décor. Its unique structure, consisting of a narrow corridor, was the driving force behind the design project, turning a limitation into an opportunity. The goal was to enhance the areas and multiply the spaces through optical illusions based on targeted colours, mirrors and wallpaper.

The space is transformed and divided, illuminated by large ribbon windows that fill the place with natural light. The intervention therefore aimed at enhancing the existing monochromatic and linear spaces which lent themselves adequately to a chromatic and decorative play thanks to the play of volumes already present.

The client, a young independent girl, was looking for a place that could be practical and welcoming at the same time, the ideal home for everyday life but also versatile. By studying her personality, habits, tastes, including her favourite colours, the design studio opted for a soft and harmonious palette, ranging from greens to chestnut browns passing through light blues.

The colours selected for this project shaped the rooms and increased the space, proving that even the smallest projects like this 50 sqm one-bedroom apartment can be enhanced and turned into welcoming and comfortable homes. The green of the living room, used in two shades, expresses regeneration and rebirth, urging us to breathe more deeply and instilling trust and security. It favours blood pressure reduction by stimulating the pituitary gland, which is ideal for the living area! The palette also includes the white colour, which acts as a neutral canvas and contributes to lighten the environment by providing balance and serenity.

The kitchen is the heart of the house, enclosed in a chromatic "cube" that instills openness and sociability, thus generating a dynamic and multifunctional environment. It becomes the place to welcome and share, accompanied by dark chestnut wood, a colour that increases energy and stimulates the appetite.

The "Elisir" wallpaper by Wall&decò, which is used right from the entrance to the kitchen, is the common thread that connects the intrinsically different environments of the house and leads the eye in the exploration of the apartment, softening the rigid lines of the narrow entrance corridor. The wallpaper decoration reproduces the design of a curtain, perfect for an irregular and discontinuous wall like that of this corridor, where it lends itself best to create the feeling of hiding another environment. Useful for making any space look bigger, ideal in a corridor. Along with colour and wallpaper, there is another element that mixes with colour, breaking up the continuous walls with a three-dimensional play of full and empty spaces. These are plaster panels consisting of rounded vertical “rods” applied to the walls, whose “coloured” verticality creates a tone-on-tone play of lights and shadows. The same game is used in the bathroom, but this time using vertical wooden elements with rectangular section which disappear into the plasterboard when applied to the floor.

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