Architecture, Design, Interiors, Style, Living — a Dubai home journal
The letter I
The rooms themselves. Layouts, surfaces, and the quiet decisions that make a flat feel like a house.
Floor plans get argued over for weeks and vertical proportion gets decided by whoever installs first. Four horizontal lines set the perceived height of a room, and three of them are still free when a flat is handed over.
Seven construction variables set the price and service life of upholstered furniture. Eight questions that produce specifications, what brand reputation.
Good August sleep is engineering: darkness, air, temperature, and the war on small green lights. A practical guide to a bedroom that stays on your side until morning.
Glass walls make Dubai flats bright and, from May to September, slightly punishing. Window treatments are the cheapest climate control you will ever buy; the trick is layering them properly.
Stone floors here are not a style decision; they are climate response. On marble's honest maintenance, porcelain's quiet competence, and the rug that makes both of them liveable.
The open kitchen looks generous on a floor plan and smells of dinner at midnight. On extraction that actually extracts, the glass partition compromise, and what closed-kitchen buyers quietly pay for.
The Dubai one-bed has a recognisable shape: a long living room, a corridor that does nothing and a kitchen wedged into a corner. Most of its problems can be solved with furniture, and almost none need a contractor.
