Home Tour: Dutch Designers At Home
Hey guys! Hope you're ready for some Dutch interior design inspiration because today I (Holly Marder, your Homes With Heart monthly columnist on decor8) am taking you through the home of an inspirational young design couple's home filled with pastel tones, unique one-of-a-kind finds and lots and lots of heart. Let's go!
Design duo Tineke Beunders and Nathan Wierink, behind the Dutch label Ontwerpduo, live within meters of their design studio, making their Eindhoven, Netherlands, family home as practical as it is pretty. With a flair for design in all it’s forms, the couple have infused their modern home with quirky details and pops of colour, exercising restraint when it comes to the details. “We both love a clutter free home. The workshop is already enough mess during the day, so there shouldn't be too many things in the house,” Beunders says. “We like things that have a function and are beautiful at the same time.”
The couple began their design label while they were still studying at the Design Academy Eindhoven and having built up a network in an around Eindhoven, they decided to stay put and love the creative energy that surrounds their home town. Having worked together for 10 of the fourteen years they have been a couple, the duo’s home is testament to their refined and perfectly aligned sense of style. “We developed our style more or less together. In fact, design choices at home is something we never argue about,” Beunders says.
At home, they endorse their own designs as well as the work of fellow designers. “All of our belongings have a story attached to them. Rather than just buying stuff, we have traded work with other designers, searched long and hard for the right pieces on Marktplaats or at second hand fairs, made things ourselves, or had things given to us by friends.”
When it comes to colour, the couple prefer to go all out in their studio using signature hues of dark grey, blues and pastels in their designs, keeping colour in their home sporadic and spontaneous. “Colour in our home is less important than it is in our work, as our use of colour is something that people recognize us for,” Beunders explains. “The colour in our house is less thought-out than in our work. Of course colour needs to be there, but the house also needs to be light and white.” The couple painted the concrete floors of their newly built home a subtle shade of pink, which slightly offsets the white but doesn't compromise on the natural light on their interior. In their bedroom, they prefer neutral tones and natural materials, while the children's bedrooms are a little more outspoken. “We like archetypes, so used reddish/pink for our little girl, and blues for our baby boy.”
The couple combine their design know how to come up with their own unique ideas at home. “While living in your house, you notice things that would be more convenient, functional, cosy or light, etc,” Beunders says. “And because we can make so much ourselves, we can really make the house work well for us.”
All over the house are concepts they devised out of a particular need or desire, such as their built-in bed, a favourite for the design duo. “We have a very weird bedroom. The 2x5 meter space was the only room in the house which would accommodate a double bed and a wardrobe, so Nathan built our bed between two walls, with curtains at the end of the bed for privacy and also a kind of luxury,” Beunders explains. “It feels very large, despite the size, but it also turns out to be a very useful bed because the baby can't fall out of it. In the weekend we love to spend our morning hours all together here.”
The couple also enjoy meal times together around the dinner table, the Slim Table by Bertjan Pot for Arco, which is surrounded by industrial style dining chairs. When not conceptualizing design at work, Beunders enjoys nothing more than preparing wholesome meals in the family’s contemporary kitchen. “The house came with the kitchen. We are lucky it is white,” she says. Warm wood tones, pops of colour and striking earthenware vessels brighten up the simple, white and grey modern affair.
A penchant for industrial style continues to the living room, where the couple display all their favourite knick knacks in, on and around a cabinet filled with old zinc boxes from the metal industry in their surrounding neighbourhood. Above the cabinet hangs the couple’s most prized piece of art, a self drawn map illustrating all of the bike routes they have taken together over the years through Europe.
Quirky and original design combines with vintage and second-hand finds, while products and prototypes from their own collection have also found their way into the savvy young couple’s interior. The coffee table configuration is their own design they came up with for the dutch brand Pode. The rug in the living room was an Etsy find.
In their newly built abode, pastels, muted tones and the odd shock of dark colour breathe life into what is now the warm and bright home of a fun-loving family of four.
So tell me: what did you love about Tineke and Nathan's home? I always love to read your comments. I'll be back for another Homes With Heart later this month. See you then! - Holly
(Photographs, styling and text by Holly Marder)