Chumbak founders Shubhra Chadda and Vivek Prabhakar describe their house in Bengaluru
BENGALURU: Before Shubhra Chadda and Vivek Prabhakar got married, they bought a house only because they wanted to decorate it however they wished to. The founders of Chumbak recently organised the interiors of their third house, a lavish four-bedroom penthouse in Indiranagar.
Both of them come from a family of defence and had never got a chance to stay in one place for long. Since early 2000, Bengaluru turned a permanent home for them. It’s never a dull day when you enter the couple’s residence and that’s what Chadda says was the first thing that she had in mind when they started doing up the house.
"Both Vivek and I work long hours. I wanted to have a place which should have happy vibes," says Chadda, who moved into the new apartment in June 2019. Pointing out to the walls, she adds, "One thing that you would notice is that, most of my walls are white. That’s because I wanted the colours of things I use to stand out."
The house sees a vivid use of teal, aqua and blues, which are soothing colours. Most of the furniture is given a distressed look so that the colours in the background pop up without being too overwhelming. Keeping things different from the ordinary, the house does not have a television in the living room, rather guests are greeted with a huge bookshelf which has books from different genres, mostly travel, since both Chadda and Prabhakar are avid travellers.
Prabhakar says, "The living room is a place where the family can chat without distraction. And my area has some lovely seasoned old trees. You can just sit in the living room and stare at them. It’s like a therapy." So where is the TV kept in the apartment? “They are installed in the guestrooms and the bedroom,” says Chadda, adding that it was planned in such a way because her guilty pleasure is to just lie in bed and watch TV. They almost took six months to complete the interiors of the apartment.
When the couple got the 4,700 sqft luxury apartment, they wanted to add some architectural elements to the house and that’s how they built a Gazebo on the terrace. "The apartment came with a terrace but we wanted a sit-out. Our friends love it here," says Chadda while revealing a secret, that since friends prefer the sit-out over the living room, she is free of any kind of food-spilling mishap
The home also has a clever use of exposed bricks. For example, since the living room is quite open, to complement it, they used a grey brick wall, while the dining space is more cosy and intimate so the couple went for exposed brick walls with white paint.
It also has a good use of gold-coloured elements which contrast well with the distressed wood. Chadda definitely has her favourite picks from her home. “I love my 12-year-old daughter’s room. It has everything that I needed in my room as a teenager. She is a lot into art so we have given her a huge work station, which has lots of pinewood,” she says.
That being said, there are no points for guessing that most of the furniture or accessories used in the house are from Chumbak. They do, however, pick a lot of accessories from different places. “It is not important where you buy these things. It is important to find that uniformity when you are picking things for your house. For us, our walls are all mellow-coloured so that all the little things we have collected get shown off,” says Chadda.
For people who are decorating their houses, her advice is to go by your strength and try and understand your own vibe and preference. It never goes wrong, she says.