How Two 600 SQFT Apartments Became One Timeless Family Home
In Vile Parle, Poorva and Soumil’s home brings the language of traditional Maharashtrian homes into a contemporary Mumbai apartment through heirlooms, salvaged architectural details, regional references and a distinctly slower way of living.
Mumbai homes are often designed around the art of fitting more into less. Raaga takes a slightly different approach.
Spread across 1,200 sq ft in Vile Parle, the home of Poorva and Soumil was imagined as an antidote to the pace of the city outside. Warm, familiar and deliberately unhurried, it borrows from the visual language of traditional Maharashtrian homes without attempting to recreate one.
Even its name sets the tone. Raaga, drawn from music, speaks of something timeless and emotive. It is an idea that finds its way into the home through old objects, regional references and architectural details that feel as though they have always belonged here.
The first clues appear at the entrance
The home’s connection to the past begins almost immediately.
A wooden window and pillar, both sourced from Pune, greet you at the entrance. Rather than being treated as decorative antiques, these salvaged elements become part of the architecture, setting up a vocabulary that continues through the rest of the apartment.
Beyond them, the home opens into the living room, a space designed to feel noticeably softer than the hard lines typically associated with an urban apartment.
Corners give way to curves, with gently rounded walls creating a sense of flow through the space. At its centre sits another familiar sight: a traditional jhula.
The surrounding details, however, keep the room from slipping into nostalgia. A mustard sofa introduces colour, while wallpaper from Kalakaarihaath has the quality of a hand painted mural. A Raja Ravi Varma print adds another classical reference without becoming the focal point of the room.
Look closely, and there are smaller stories everywhere.
Brass pieces seen throughout the home have been passed down through generations. Instead of being stored away as family keepsakes, they have been folded into everyday life.
A Paithani pattern becomes architecture
Perhaps one of the home's most interesting regional references isn't an object at all.
Between the living room and mandir is a partition inspired by patterns found in Paithani, the centuries old Maharashtrian weaving tradition best known for its richly detailed sarees.
Here, the reference has been translated into an architectural element. The partition creates separation for the mandir without completely closing it off from the living space, allowing the two areas to remain visually connected.
It's a recurring idea within Raaga. Traditional references aren't simply placed inside a modern shell. They're reinterpreted to perform a function within it.
The kitchen and dining room have an old fashioned connection
Closer to the dining area, another wooden window creates an unexpected opening between the kitchen and dining room.
It works almost like the service windows found in older homes, allowing conversations and food to move easily between the two spaces.
The kitchen itself is deliberately straightforward. Designed around everyday use rather than spectacle, its most distinctive material choice is red granite, bringing an earthy warmth to an otherwise practical space.
Together, the dining room and kitchen demonstrate how Raaga balances atmosphere with everyday living. The traditional references aren't there simply because they look beautiful. Many of them influence how the family actually uses the home.
In the bedroom, a 100 year old piece finds a new life
The primary bedroom continues the home's preference for softer forms.
Curves travel overhead across the ceiling, while a four poster bed with subtle brass detailing becomes the room's anchor.
But the piece with the longest history sits nearby.
The dresser belonged to Poorva's mother in law and is over a century old. Now incorporated into the bedroom, it carries the marks and memories of another generation into an otherwise contemporary space.
Wallpaper was chosen to visually continue the greenery seen through the windows, blurring the transition between indoors and outside. Even the ceiling becomes part of the detailing, with wallpaper from Birla Opus drawing the eye upward.
A walk in wardrobe, meanwhile, handles the less romantic realities of daily life, keeping storage organised and largely out of sight.
Not every corner needs to make a statement
Some of the most practical spaces in Raaga are also its quietest.
A dedicated dry utility area accommodates the washing machine along with additional grocery storage, keeping everyday functions away from the primary living spaces.
The children's bedroom takes on a lighter, more relaxed personality, with a FabIndia wardrobe sitting naturally within the home's broader material palette.
The parents' bedroom, meanwhile, prioritises something more important than a dramatic design moment: ease.
The furniture layout leaves more room for movement, the bed height has been considered for comfortable everyday use, and essentials remain within easy reach. It is a reminder that thoughtful design isn't always the detail you notice first. Sometimes, it's simply the reason a room feels effortless to live in.
A Mumbai apartment that doesn't quite feel like one
There are plenty of references to the past inside Raaga, but the home never feels like a period piece.
Perhaps that's because it isn't trying to reproduce a traditional Maharashtrian home literally.
Instead, it takes fragments of one, from the swing and old wooden windows to brass heirlooms, regional patterns and familiar materials, and allows them to coexist with the requirements of a contemporary family.
The result is a 1,200 sq ft Mumbai apartment that feels unusually removed from the city surrounding it.
In a place that is almost always looking ahead, Raaga makes a convincing case for bringing a little of the past along with you.
Homeowners: Poorva & Soumil
Designed by: Studio ThoughtProcess
Photography: I.D. Rohan Patel
Location: Vile Parle, Mumbai