How to Design a Glamorous Home Bar

Those little niche spaces we have in our homes—a coffee bar, a home office, the powder room, a home bar—are often a great space for a designer to really have fun: bold colours, rich textiles, great metallic accent pieces. They’re the jewel boxes that create a little hit of wow.

Designer Alykhan Velji went for glam in this home bar he designed for Divine Hardwood floor’s Reveal 2018 showcase. With the design direction of “Regency” and a grey-stained parquet flooring from their Louis XIV collection as their starting point, his team narrowed in on a Hollywood Regency-influenced design.

The rich, saturated green cabinetry (Woodland Fern from Cloverdale Paint) is paired with grey grasscloth walls and bold brass accents. The millwork itself adds an Old World, European vibe: with a faceted door face, its handles are set dead centre—reminiscent of the door on a Parisian apartment.

Curved millwork over the cabinetry and a brass kickplate contribute to the bar feeling like it’s a piece of furniture, rather than a built-in.Warm brass accents feature in the hardware itself, along with the mounting plates of the wall sconces, the shelf above the sink and the legs of Mobilia side table—part of Velji’s Modern India collection for the brand.

It’s a space that’s small on square footage, and big on impact. “We wanted to work with lot of rich tones, to showcase you can mix all of these items in a small space and it still really works,” says Velji. “A lot of people think that in a small space, you need lighter colours. But you can have opulence, and be quite dramatic.”