GRACE NOTES

A home in Mumbai designed by Kumpal Vaid artfully brings together graceful restraint, familial sentiment and a play of textures into quiet sophistication

- TEXT BY ELA DAS PHOTOGRAPHY BY ISHITA SITWALA

The swing came first. Not the soft oak ceilings, or the milky, marbled walls — but the swing, steady as memory. Classic in silhouette but softly reimagined, it was the family’s one nonnegotiable. “It wasn't just requested, it was demanded,” recounts Kumpal Vaid with a smile. As founder of the Mumbai-based design practice Purple Backyard, she was entrusted with shaping a new home for a three-generation Gujarati family in Mumbai — a project rooted not in reinvention, but in gentle return. “The swing was our perfect ‘something old’. The one thing that made the new space instantly feel like theirs.”

Set in the city’s culturally rich enclave with tree-speckled streets, where roots run deep and loyalties deeper — the 4,000 sq ft apartment stands just a few turns from the family’s former address. “They didn’t want transformation. They wanted an elegant retelling of their life like a love story,” reflects Kumpal. Her task was clear: to design with tenderness, not bravado. To fold memory into every corner, while letting the light in. “They described their vision as measured grace. Not minimalist, not maximalist. Just... considered.”