A north-facing room in Bangalore behaves nothing like a north-facing room in Milan. Most imported palettes ignore this.
Indian daylight is high, hard and heavily saturated for most of the year. A palette developed under the soft northern light of a European studio will read entirely differently once it lands in Bengaluru.
We test every finish on site, at three times of day, for a minimum of two days before it is signed off. Studio lightboxes are a useful filter, never a verdict.
The most common failure is white. A cool white that looks crisp in a catalogue turns distinctly blue under high UV, then grey again after dusk. We almost always warm our whites by two or three points.
The second is stone. Highly reflective polished finishes amplify an already bright environment into glare. Honed and leathered surfaces do the opposite: they absorb the excess and give the room its calm back.
Written by the Elite Decore studio ·