We Design for the Everyday
Some of the most important conversations we have with clients are about very ordinary things.
Where do you put your handbag when you come home? Where do you take your shoes off? Can two people make breakfast without constantly moving around each other? Is there somewhere to sit and talk while someone else is cooking? Where do the school bags, dog leads, hats & all the other things a family uses every day actually go?
These details tell us an enormous amount about how a home needs to work, and they are every bit as important as the bigger conversations we have about kitchens, bathrooms, finishes & furniture. A home can be incredibly beautiful, but if the everyday things haven't been considered properly, you'll be reminded of it every single day.
A mudroom is a perfect example. Yes, we need somewhere for the shoes, bags & coats, but why shouldn't that space be beautiful too? We design beautiful joinery that takes care of all the practical things while still creating a room that feels like part of the home rather than somewhere everything has simply been hidden away.
It's the same thinking we bring to the rest of a house. When we're getting to know a client, we want to understand how their family actually lives. Which door do they come through every day? Do the children do their homework at the kitchen island even though they have desks in their bedrooms? Does one person cook while the other sits nearby with a glass of wine? Does everyone eat breakfast together, or are they coming & going at different times?
Those conversations can change a design considerably because there's often a difference between the way we picture ourselves living and what we actually do. We might imagine long lunches around a beautifully set dining table when most meals are eaten at the kitchen island, create a separate home office only to find we'd rather work somewhere closer to the rest of the family, or plan several different places to sit when everyone gravitates towards the same part of the house at the end of the day. Sometimes, once we understand how a family really spends its time, it becomes obvious that the space could be put to better use somewhere else.
Our role is to pay close attention to all of this and allow it to inform the design. The way a family moves through the house, where they gather, what they do every day & the things that frustrate them about the way they live now help us create a home that feels completely natural to them.
Function shouldn't come at the expense of beauty, and we don't see the two as separate things. A mudroom, laundry, entry or beautifully designed piece of storage deserves the same attention as any other part of the home. When these spaces are resolved well, they make everyday life easier without ever feeling purely functional, and you don't really think about where the practical ends and the beautiful begins.
We love designing homes for the celebrations, long lunches, Christmases & weekends when the house is full, but a life at home is also made up of thousands of much smaller moments — making breakfast, unpacking groceries, coming home at the end of the day, cooking dinner while someone sits nearby talking. Those moments might be ordinary, but they're certainly not insignificant.
We design for all of it.
The everyday should work beautifully & look beautiful too.
At Mel Hoekstra Interiors, we design homes around the people who live in them. Beautiful spaces matter, but so does the way a home works every day; how people move through it, where they gather & the small routines that make it their own. Bringing beauty and functionality together is at the heart of Our Way of Living.
