When interior designer Jagmyaseni Bose went for a “consult” at a Rajarhat flat recently, the young couple wanted “the paint Saif Ali Khan promotes on television”. Previously she had worked in a Bijoygarh flat. Bose, who is listed on Just Dial, gets about two to three calls every day.
Designed interiors are not just the preserve of the upper crust any more. Interior design is available at affordable rates for the middle classes and flats in middle-class localities such.
As Jadavpur, Behala, Garia and Ballygunge are getting the professional touch. It leaves the good old mistri, who dictated everything from floor tiles with large diamond patterns that overwhelmed a small flat to bathroom fittings that were co-ordinated only with his inner thoughts, somewhat subdued.
Businessman Gopesh Majumder approached designer Bidisha Basu last year to do the interiors of his 1,350 sq ft flat near Kasba police station. “My wife and I were constantly ideating with the designer. Having a designer helped because we didn’t have to run to the market to get the things required. Handling the labour was also not my headache,” he says. Majumder had a budget of Rs 4 lakh. “Finally the cost was around Rs 10.5 lakh. But I am not complaining.
We have used every available corner. I have a young kid and the house is designed in a way that it never looks untidy. There is nothing breakable around,” he says.Gone are the days when picking up patchwork cushion covers and a few terracotta Ganeshas were decoration enough. Wall highlights, wallpapers, blinds, artificial green turf, false ceiling, wooden flooring, modular kitchen are words that are being tossed about in households with a designer lurking in the corner.
Anup Chatterjee, who is in the real estate business, recently got his South City flat designed by a professional. The highlight of his drawing room is an onyx column with concealed lighting. “It glows, adding just the right kind of light. It adds to the mood,” he says. “We had this really small balcony. Our interior designer managed to turn it into something beautiful by putting in an artificial turf and two garden chairs,” he adds.
Designers offer economy packages. Most of the materials are available in the city now at affordable rates. Bidisha Basu was recently approached by IT professional Anindya Das for bedroom furniture and the kitchen of his Garia flat. “Today there is a space crunch. It is better to take the help of someone with the knowhow. The look is important,” he says. He spent Rs 60,000 on the furniture.
“I shop from shops like M.L. Roy for wallpapers and kitchen solutions, Skipper for upholstery, Harish Aluminium for metal works and Light Centre for lights,” says designer Sudakshina Mukherjee. Designer Urvashi Basu visits Heera Marble and Granites in Topsia for granites and tiles.
Bidisha Basu’s clients are mostly from the upper middle class, people earning between Rs 80,000 and Rs 1,20,000 per month. “My clients are mostly from the IT or the insurance sector, or those owning small businesses,” she says. She has also done the Puri house of a family from Lake Town.
Popular features are wall highlights and wallpapers. The most popular feature, however, remains the modular kitchen. Whatever the budget, the modular kitchen is a must. “So many clients call me only to do a modular kitchen,” says Urvashi Basu. Not that they are really “modular”. “They can at best be described as readymade kitchens. Real modular kitchens are much more expensive. They have drawers and built-in gadget spaces and not cabinets,” explains architect and designer Bichitresh Saha.
Disposable income and the lifestyle explosion are fuelling the aspiration for beautiful homes. People travel more. And what they see, they want. The shrinking size of homes is another reason.
“Old houses had two big advantages — the living space was big and the ceilings were high. Now when you change homes, you can’t fit your old furniture in the new space,” says Mukherjee. The majority of her residential jobs have been in flats measuring 700-800 sq ft.
But old houses are turning designer too. Manoja Banerjee, 57, spent more than Rs 2 lakh on the first floor drawing room of her 154-year-old house in Bhowanipore, near Indira cinema. “My house is so old, I wanted to change the look completely, give it a more contemporary look,” says the housewife, whose husband is a retired chemical engineer.
“I had seen the stained glass panels at a restaurant and wanted it, but if I had tried to do it on my own, I wouldn’t have known where to get it from,” she explained. The homemaker worked in close consultation with her designer daughter.
Bichitresh Saha remembers a time when a client would listen to his ideas and then ask the household mistri for his comments. “They didn’t get that I was a graduate from IIT. The servant would open the door and say the furniturewala is here. Things started changing post-globalisation,” he recalls.
“It would be wrong to generalise the middle classes,” says Sandip Nath, who works with interior designer Aloke Sen. “The requirements and spending capacity of a Bengali middle class, a Marwari middle class and a Gujarati middle class are different. The definition of middle class also varies from community to community,” he adds. He says it is also common for house owners to consult designer catalogues and try to get local carpenters and mistris to do that.
But 20 years ago, there were about a hundred interior designers in the city; today, there are about 2,000, he adds. A high-end designer job cost a crore for a three-bedroom flat of 2,000 to 2,500sq ft space, but Urvashi Basu, an interior designer who trained in the UK, says she can do an interior for Rs 2.5 lakh, including the furniture. She has also done the interiors for many South City flats where clients have not always been too strict about the budget. Mukherjee says Rs 1,500 per square feet is basic. This will include the paint job, upholstery, furniture, tiles, electrical works, plumbing, as well as her fees.
Calcutta wants Sabyasachi at the price of a Satyanarayan Park sari. Bichitresh Das would like the homeowners to spend as much as they spent on the house. “The interiors of the house have to match the location and the surroundings. If you are spending Rs 10 lakh on a flat in Behala, spend 10 lakh on the interiors. If you are spending more on a house in Alipore, spend an equivalent sum on the interiors,” he says. Mukherjee says she has to make do with even Rs 1,100 per sq ft, at client insistence.
Not that the budget designer can’t go wrong. A house in south Calcutta has ended up with white bathroom tiles on the entrance walls. The effect can be contradictory at times. Wooden floors, carved ceilings and painted glass doors do not go very well with old plastic flowers in an urn. A cheesy poster with two happy dogs can jostle for space on the wall with contemporary art, antiques share shelf space with pink teddies and yellow dogs and a revolving doll sold outside New Market stares at the minibar from one corner of the room. The designer room is sometimes not comforting enough without the warmth of the old familiar things.