12/13/2024
The right seat is key: opt for an ergonomic armchair that provides good back support, preferably with armrests for maximum comfort. Recliners or chairs with integrated footrests can be an excellent choice for complete relaxation.

Good lighting is essential for reading. Place an adjustable floor lamp next to the chair with a warm, directable light to avoid eye strain. For added atmosphere, include candles or small decorative lamps.
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Soft blankets, cozy cushions, and plush rugs make the reading nook more inviting. Choose wool or velvet fabrics for a warm and snug effect.
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Keep books within easy reach with shelves, wall-mounted racks, or decorative baskets. If space allows, a small bookcase can become a functional and aesthetic furnishing element.
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Personalize your reading nook with details that reflect you: a ceramic mug for hot drinks, inspiring artwork or photos, and green plants for a touch of life.
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Interior Designer since 1985
CEO & Founder, Italian Design in the World
Kitchen and bathroom are where the home meets water every day — preparation, cleaning, care, rest. That is why they are also where the gap between beautiful in rendering and sustainable in use shows first: droplets at joints, twisted paths, light that lies about the face, surfaces that demand obsessive cleaning.
In the city, those few square metres beyond the door are often the only truce between the flat and the noise outside. They are not a decorative extra: they are a border — different light, different wind, different rules. Yet too many balconies stay storage for crates, folding chairs and rushed tiles, as if design stopped at the glass.
The prejudice comes from years of institutional rooms where function crushed aesthetics. In residential work, things have changed: handles that are objects, walk-in showers that are elegance before aid, wide doors and near-invisible thresholds that are build quality before regulation. The gap is not budget: it is awareness that dignity lives in daily details — the ones you touch hundreds of times a year.
Open a catalogue of contemporary homes and you often find cover-worthy kitchens, theatrical bathrooms, living rooms that look like photo sets. Between one image and the next, a narrow corridor appears, lit by a sad single point — or a vestibule reduced to a knot between doors. That is not a technical detail: it is silent design about what life spends most of its time doing — passing through, pausing, shifting register, leaving one room before entering another.
Open plan has dominated the image of the contemporary home: few walls, few boundaries, maximum flexibility. The promise was freedom — kitchen in dialogue with the living room, light flowing, no "closed" rooms. Over time many have discovered the downside: noise travelling, no refuge, difficulty concentrating or switching off. The response isn't to go back to the closed-off house of the past, but to rethink the value of dedicated spaces: environments with a clear function that the body and mind learn to recognise.
Interior design has long favoured sight: colours, shapes, surfaces. Only recently have we started to talk about touch and smell. Hearing, by contrast, remains the most neglected sense at the design stage — yet it's the one we can't switch off. We live in homes that boom, reverberate, carry voices and noise from one room to another. The result is stress, fatigue, difficulty concentrating and resting.