The aim for any home is to offer a sanctuary to those who live within, which is why Kunal Trehan and Thomas Hope have designed the ultimate sitting room in their Sandbach self-build
The aim for any home is to offer a sanctuary to those who live within, which is why Kunal Trehan and Thomas Hope have designed the ultimate sitting room in their Sandbach self-build
Kunal Trehan travels hundreds of miles each week with his busy interior design business, Touched Interiors, while his fiancé Thomas Hope spends his days between his popular hair salon, visiting private clients and managing his hair and beauty on call business, Artisté, so once home, the need to relax and wholly step away from the stresses of the day is paramount – hence the design of their drawing room, which offers pure, unadulterated comfort and luxe.
“I design a lot of drawing rooms,” Kunal says, “and they are usually the most luxurious and indulgent room in the house, but then the client will say ‘oh, it’s our favourite room...but we rarely use it.’ We don’t want any rooms in this house that we don’t use, so we decided to incorporate the cinema into the formal drawing room. I just think when we’ve gone to all this effort to design something so beautiful we absolutely want to use it, whether it’s just to relax or to watch a film.”
With windows on three sides, which will give uninterrupted views of sunsets across the fields that surround their property, this is a room built for slow evenings at home, in company or sprawled across deeply luxurious sofas, escaping into a world of fiction and fantasy.
“The audio-visual and lighting for this room are of course absolutely key to its success,” Kunal says. “We have worked with the brilliant Be Smart Home, who are our automation partners at Touched Interiors. Our smart home is controlled by a state-of-the-art system called Control 4. This enables us to set programmes which, at a touch of button, can dim individual lights to any desired percentage, operate the blackout curtains and even play pre-set music and adjust the climate control, creating the most perfect setting.”
Catch up with the story so far: the dining room, designed with luxury and practicality in mind
In a cinema room sound is a key component, of course, and Kunal and Thomas had very specific demands – and once again have pushed technology to its limits.
“We love an immersive sound experience and this was not only important for those evenings we may be enjoying the room over good conversation and some light background music, but also it needed to work to create a full surround sound cinematic experience for when the 4K projector and cinema screen appears,” Thomas says. “We opted for an invisible speaker system. Speakers are hidden in the ceiling and are completely flat and solid, allowing any finish to be applied on the surface. We have five in the room, some within the white ceiling area and others within the Venetian plastered ceiling. The result is that we have amazing sound without interrupting the beautiful finish. We tested this concept thorough before committing of course, but to our delight the sound quality is perfect.”
Once the technical aspects of the room were sorted, Kunal and Thomas moved on to the all-important design scheme.
“As a designer I love connecting the floor space to the ceiling design, it truly creates a connected and considered design. In our room we have opted to mirror the shape of the sofa design to the ceiling, resulting in a very unique shape for a coffered ceiling. The geometric design is layered by further incorporating three circular pendant lights above, in a brushed brass finish, which mirror the size and shape of the circular coffee tables set between the sofas below.”
One of Kunal’s greatest skills is his ability to create a flow throughout the space, by utilising complementary materials throughout the house. Here, he has chosen to run the dark stone border used in the hallway Here, he has chosen to run the dark stone border used in the hallway into the drawing room as flooring, circling the perimeter of the room and travelling up the wall on either side of the entrance doors, which are in themselves darkly gorgeous. All the doorways leading from the hallway have pocket doors, allowing Kunal and Thomas to draw them open to create a seamless flow throughout the whole ground floor space, or draw them closed to create a sense of intimacy.
This sense of closeness and comfort is enhanced by the colour scheme, which is darker than elsewhere in the home. The dark chocolate of the doors is picked up by elements within the stone tiles and we have used the same material for the end tables. Inspired by the soft, peachy light that comes through the windows during the sunset, we have actually chosen a warm, dusky pink for the curtains and it is all tied it together by brushed brass trim on lighting, tables and accessories.
Luxury with purpose in a room for all seasons.
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