This home is tucked away in the serene green lanes of Five Gardens in Wadala, a neighbourhood that still holds onto its old-world charm. Spread across 4,800 square feet, it’s a full-floor apartment with soaring 13-foot ceilings. The layout includes three bedrooms, each with its own walk-in closet, a TV room that also serves as a guest room, and a beautifully connected living and dining area designed to feel open and expansive.
Project Name: Apartment VIII
Studio Name: Kiran Gala & Associates
Location: Mumbai, India
Date of Completion: March 2020
Area: 4,000 sq. ft
Principal Architect/Designer: Kiran Gala & Sonam Gala Gosalia
Photography Credits: Suleiman Merchant
The clients were very clear from the beginning that they wanted something that felt simple and elegant. Our vision was to keep the design grounded in timelessness. We aimed for calm textures and open volumes, allowing the space to feel grand without shouting for attention. The idea was to let the materials speak for themselves.
Five Gardens in Wadala is one of those rare city pockets where you can still hear the birds and feel the breeze. It is surrounded by greenery, with broad streets and a sense of calm that is hard to come by in Mumbai. The context definitely influenced our design choices. We wanted the home to echo the peace of its surroundings while embracing the elegance of modern living.
If there’s one design philosophy that really stands out, it’s the quiet luxury of material layering. We stayed within a soft palette of whites and beiges, adding depth through texture. The living and dining areas feature subtle green accents that come alive in different forms like stone, fabric, wallpaper, and paint –creating an understated sense of luxury without breaking the visual harmony.
The apartment came to us as a bare shell, which allowed us complete freedom in how we approached the design. The tall ceilings naturally became our starting point. We used vertical elements like full-height veneers and paneling to highlight that sense of volume. Our inspiration came from the idea of seamless luxury where every space feels connected yet distinct in mood and function.
You step out of the elevator and the entrance to the apartment is right there — private and inviting. The door opens into the living room, which flows naturally into the dining area on the left. As you walk further, the kitchen sits to the right, followed by the utility space, powder room and the guest-slash-TV room at the end of the corridor.
On the other side, an L-shaped passage takes you to the three bedrooms. The master bedroom comes first, followed by the sons’ rooms. Each bedroom has its own walk-in wardrobe, and each one carries a unique design language, yet fits into the larger story of the home.
The passageway posed the biggest design challenge as it was long, narrow and without natural light. So we leaned into it, made it a feature. We designed a zigzag marble inlay on the floor, added frosted glass in matching patterns, and placed mirrors strategically to reflect and diffuse light. This made the corridor feel not just functional but beautifully thought through.
The quiet charm of Five Gardens called for a calm interior story. We let the outdoors inspire the indoors. Green was the accent colour, but always in subtle, textural forms never loud or overdone. We wanted the home to feel like a continuation of the peaceful environment outside.
For us, the strongest guiding narrative was consistency. We wanted every part of the apartment to feel like it belonged to the same family. We achieved this through repeated use of the same flooring, the same warm veneers, and wall cladding materials. The result is a home that flows organically from one space to the next.
Honestly, the passageway. It’s usually the most overlooked part of a home, but here, it became one of the most memorable elements. Turning a difficult space into a design highlight is always a win. It pushed us creatively and was incredibly rewarding.
Lighting the passage without compromising the layout or privacy was a real puzzle. There were no windows, so we had to be clever with materials — frosted glass, mirrors, light tones, and even added some art and family photographs to inject warmth and personality.
Because it was a bare shell, we didn’t need to undo any previous work. Everything grew organically—one layer at a time, in sync with the client’s evolving vision. It gave us the room to be intentional with every detail.
Our ethos is simple, we design spaces that will feel as good in ten years as they do today. We are driven by detail, and we believe in working with light, material, and proportion to create homes that are as livable as they are beautiful. In this apartment, you can see that in the way all the surfaces and spaces connect without feeling repetitive.
When we sourced the single rock that now forms the bed back in the master bedroom, it was just this massive, raw piece of stone. Sculpting it into that wave form and seeing it finally installed was a full-circle moment. It’s rare to see a material come to life like that, and the client’s reaction made it even more special.
It’s a calm, confident home. There’s a quiet sophistication in the way it uses space and texture. It respects the environment it sits in and brings a sense of balance between bold design ideas and timeless materials.
We’ve used beige marble across the floors to create a soft, uniform base. The walls are cladded in sandblasted white travertine, which reflects light beautifully. Warm wood veneers stretch tall to draw the eye up and emphasize the height of the rooms. Every room introduces a pop of colour — rust, blue, yellow woven into the neutral palette through upholstery, lighting or artwork. It’s a curated balance of earthy and polished.
Definitely the wave-formed stone bed back in the master bedroom. It is sculptural, dramatic, and unlike anything else in the home. But the passage with its zigzag flooring, frosted glass detailing, and clever lighting comes a very close second. Both spaces leave a lasting impression.
