In this conversation, interior stylist Anubha Aneja reflects on conceiving HōmAnAn as a living, breathing showhouse rather than a transactional retail space. Speaking to Asma Rafat, Senior Correspondent, Realty+ she unpacks how the five senses shaped spatial decisions through restraint, material honesty, and emotional intuition, not visual excess. Aneja discusses designing for feeling before form, curating diverse Indian décor brands within a cohesive narrative, and allowing tradition, craft, and stillness to guide modern expression. The interview offers insight into a design philosophy rooted in memory, presence, and lived experience, redefining how spaces are felt, inhabited, and remembered in contemporary Indian interior practice today.
HōmAnAn is positioned as an experiential retail showhouse rather than a conventional marketplace. As an interior stylist, how did you translate the abstract idea of the five senses into tangible spatial and styling decisions?
Anubha Aneja: I never treated the five senses as a concept to be illustrated. For me, they were a way of listening to the house. Instead of assigning senses to rooms, I allowed them to guide micro-decisions, how light softens a wall, how a surface responds when brushed past, how silence feels between two spaces.
Sight emerged through layers rather than focal points. Touch was embedded in honest materials, woven cottons, raw wood, stone, brushed metals, that invite instinctive interaction. Scent was allowed to exist as memory rather than presence, coming from natural materials themselves. Sound was not designed, but absorbed, through rugs, textiles, spatial pauses, and yes, a thoughtfully curated playlist that supports mood rather than dictates it. Taste entered quietly through hospitality, through moments that feel lived-in rather than staged.
HōMAnAn became a house you don’t consume visually, you enter it the way you enter a memory, slowly and intuitively.
The Five Senses theme suggests that emotion comes before aesthetics. How do you design and style spaces to evoke feeling first, before visual impact?
Anubha Aneja: I begin every space with one question: What should someone feel here before they see anything?
Is it calm? Grounded? Held? Curious?
Aesthetics follow emotion, never the other way around. When scale feels human, when light arrives gently, when materials are honest, the visual language finds its place organically. I consciously resist instant impact. I’m far more interested in spaces that stay with you after you have left.
At HōmAnAn, the intention was not to impress on entry, but to unfold over time, like a conversation that deepens the longer you stay.
Touch, smell, sound, taste, and sight often compete for attention in retail environments. How did you ensure a harmonious sensory balance without overwhelming the visitor?
Anubha Aneja: By choosing silence over stimulation.
Retail spaces often try to speak in all senses at once. I did the opposite, I allowed one sense to lead while the others stayed in the background. In some rooms, touch becomes the protagonist. In others, light carries the experience. Scent is singular, never layered. Sound is softened, never performative.
This creates hierarchy, not noise. The senses don’t compete, they converse. Visitors are never overwhelmed; they’re gently guided, almost unconsciously.
As a stylist working with multiple homegrown Indian décor brands, how did you maintain each brand’s identity while curating a cohesive, sensory-driven narrative across the showhouse?
Anubha Aneja: Cohesion didn’t come from making brands look alike, it came from giving them the right context.
Each brand was placed where it felt emotionally and spatially authentic. I didn’t force a common aesthetic language. Instead, I created a lived-in framework, a real home, within which each brand could express itself naturally.
When an object sits where it belongs, its identity sharpens. My role was to create dialogue, not dominance. The house is the grammar; the brands are individual voices within the same story.
HōmAnAn challenges the way people discover and choose décor. How does engaging all five senses change the customer’s relationship with objects and spaces?
Anubha Aneja: When all five senses are engaged, objects stop behaving like products. They begin to feel like experiences.
People stop asking, Will this look good?
They start asking, How does this make me feel?
That shift changes everything. Emotional memory replaces visual comparison. A chair is remembered for how it supported you. A lamp for the mood it held at dusk. This is when buying becomes belonging and consumption turns into connection.
Designing for the senses requires intuition as much as technique. What role did your personal styling philosophy play in shaping the emotional journey of visitors through HōmAnAn?
Anubha Aneja: My philosophy has always been rooted in lived experience, not visual trends. I believe homes should breathe, pause, and make room for people, not perform for them.
At HōmAnAn, this translated into intentional stillness. Corners that ask for nothing. Transitions that allow the body to slow down. Spaces that feel familiar even on the first entry.
I trusted instinct over optics, what felt right over what photographed well. That trust shaped the emotional rhythm of the house.
HōmAnAn brings together legacy names alongside younger studios. What was the thinking behind placing these voices in conversation under one roof?
Anubha Aneja: Indian design is not linear, it’s layered, inherited, interrupted, and reimagined. I wanted HōmAnAn to reflect that continuum.
Legacy brands bring depth, discipline, and continuity. Younger studios bring experimentation and new language. When placed together, they don’t compete, they complete each other.
The result is a space where tradition doesn’t feel heavy, and contemporary design doesn’t feel rootless. They exist in conversation, not hierarchy.
Your work balances a strong desi sensibility with contemporary design. How do you fuse tradition with modernity without one overpowering the other?
Anubha Aneja: I don’t treat tradition as ornament, I treat it as philosophy. It’s about intention, craft, respect for material, and time. Modernity, for me, is about clarity and relevance.
When these values align, fusion happens naturally. I avoid excess and focus on proportion, texture, and restraint. Tradition whispers through material and process. Modernity expresses itself through spatial openness.
Neither needs to shout to be heard.
Tribal art holds a distinct place in your visual language. What draws you to working with tribal artists, and how do their narratives shape your spaces?
Anubha Aneja: Tribal art doesn’t decorate, it narrates. It preserves memory, ritual, land, and life.
I am drawn to its honesty and its refusal to be polished. When tribal art enters a space, it grounds it. It introduces humility. It reminds us that design is not just about beauty, but about truth.
These narratives prevent spaces from becoming superficial. They anchor them in humanity.
The prayer room is treated very differently from conventional styling in your projects. What guides your approach to designing these spaces, both visually and emotionally?
Anubha Aneja: Prayer rooms are not styled, they are surrendered to.
At HōmAnAn, the prayer space was designed using handmade clay art, intentionally imperfect in form and finish. Clay, by nature, reminds us that perfection is not divine, acceptance is. Just as clay carries the marks of the hand that shaped it, we enter prayer carrying our own imperfections.
The space invites surrender, not spectacle. Light is soft. The materials are honest. There is no excess, only presence. Emotionally, it’s meant to feel protective and intimate, not performative.
It’s a reminder that homes are not just lived in, they are believed in.
