Decor
Home decor and styling in Abu Dhabi
Decorating is the part everyone enjoys and the part that most often gets done in the wrong order. Cushions and lamps arrive before anyone has worked out where the light falls in the afternoon, or admitted that the sofa is too small for the wall it sits against. The result is a room full of nice things that does not quite hold together.
We come at it from the building side, which changes the emphasis. Arkan has worked on interiors in Abu Dhabi since 2003 and makes its own furniture, so a room that needs a table of a particular size gets one made rather than compromised on. The side tables and the marble topped pedestal table in the gallery below are ours. Styling, for us, is the last layer of a job rather than a separate service bolted on at the end.
Process
How we work
- 01
Start from the room you have
Light, proportion, what the room is actually used for and at what time of day. A scheme that ignores any of those looks like a showroom rather than somewhere anyone lives.
- 02
Fix the big surfaces first
Floor, walls and window. Get those wrong and no amount of styling on top will rescue the room, which is why decor and fit-out are better handled together than in sequence.
- 03
Furniture and fabric
Scale before colour. The most common mistake in a large villa room is furniture that is individually handsome and collectively too small for the space.
- 04
The last layer
Lighting, mirrors, art and the pieces that sit on surfaces. This is the part that reads as "decorated", and it works best when the three steps before it have already been done properly.
Gallery
From this part of our work
See the full gallery
Questions
Questions we get asked
- Do I have to replace everything?
- No, and you usually should not. Most rooms improve more from re-covering two chairs and changing the lighting than from starting again. We will tell you what is worth keeping.
- Can you work to a fixed budget?
- Yes. Tell us the number at the start rather than at the end. A budget shapes where the money goes, and the decisions are much better when it is known from the first conversation.
- Can you style around furniture I already own?
- That is a normal brief for us, and often the more interesting one. Inherited or collected pieces give a room something a single purchase never does. If a piece needs re-covering or repairing to earn its place, that work is done by our own people.
- Do you supply the furniture as well?
- We can make it. That is the main thing that separates us from a decorator: if the room needs a console of a particular length, it can be built rather than hunted for.
Related services
Next step
Tell us about your project
Send a floor plan, a photograph, or just an idea. We will tell you what it takes and what it costs.