House and design
A place to live.
Not a display.
What mattered more to us when furnishing the house than a perfectly coordinated picture.
A holiday home is allowed to look good in photographs. Above all, it should work once the camera has been put away.
Scandinavian style can quickly sound like a shopping list: pale wood, quiet colours, a lovely lamp. We have nothing against any of that. It does not, on its own, make a room where you want to spend a rainy afternoon.
At the Lake House, our question was therefore rarely ‘Does it look perfect in the picture?’ More often, it was ‘Would we want to sit comfortably here, cook, sleep and leave our things about for a week?’
The view outside
Show less.
See more.
When there is a lake outside the window, the room does not need five more things all asking for attention. We like the view outside to feel natural. That does not mean everything indoors has to be empty. It simply means that not every free surface is assigned a decorative duty.
Quiet colours help, as does furniture that does something useful where it stands: somewhere to sit, put things down or store them. An object need not constantly explain how special it is. Often it is enough to realise, after two days, that it is exactly where it should be.
Everyday life is the test
Picture the house
being lived in.
Where does a jacket end up? Where do you put your cup in the morning? Is there room when two people prepare something at once? Those questions do not make a room more photogenic. They do determine whether a stay feels relaxed.
We did not think of the house as a stage that has to be reset immediately after every use. You should be able to open a book, cook something and spread out. Furnishings that only work when untouched would be rather impractical in a holiday home.
An outing for the design-curious
Älmhult.
And a second look.
If you are interested in interiors and the history behind them, visit the IKEA Museum in Älmhult. It occupies the first IKEA store, which opened in 1958; the museum itself opened in 2016. For us, it is an interesting addition to a holiday, not a compulsory furniture-shopping appointment.
Perhaps you will look a little more closely afterwards. Which things are genuinely useful? Which ideas have lasted? And which of today’s fashionable objects would you still want to use in ten years? In the end, everyday life supplies the best answers.
Our verdict
We did not want to recreate a catalogue. We wanted a house where you would happily stay another day.
Read on
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Your stay in Rågeboda
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