ELLE DECO International A-List featuring Iram Sultan

An ode to friendship within a layered home in Delhi

17 Jul 2026

Some choose to bargain with materials, others with form. For EDIDA’s Interior Designer of the Year 2025, Iram Sultan, every project is centred around emotional resonance. Over the last 27 years, the Gurugram-based designer has built a practice in which luxury residences and boutique hospitality projects are layered and shaped by interpersonal relationships as much as by architecture. As Art Director at Sunday Design, Iram was instrumental in shaping the brand’s furniture and lifestyle collections, bringing the same nuanced understanding of craftsmanship, materiality and everyday living to products as she does to spaces.

This deeply considered approach has also earned her international recognition, with a place on the ELLE Deco International A-List, a global showcase celebrating the most remarkable design projects and the creative voices shaping contemporary interiors across the 25 international editions of ELLE Decoration. Instead of relying on singular moments of drama, Iram composes environments through texture, proportion, light and carefully calibrated detail, creating spaces that feel collected over time rather than designed all at once.

“Debates about design are the foundation of this home. Lovingly collected, hotly debated, each artwork carries its own anecdote"

Mrudul Pathak Kundu, Editor-in-Chief, ELLE DECOR India

A set of five artworks by Bhagyashree Suthar from Akara Art Gallery brings quiet cadence to the master bedroom. At the foot of the Ditre Italia bed is a bench by DeMuro Das; Photography by Ishita Sitwala

Few projects embody this philosophy as completely as the New Delhi home she designed for Gautam and Ruchika Baid. The four-storey home emerged from a long-standing friendship, allowing a rare degree of creative trust to shape every decision. The house is conceived as both a refuge and a gathering place. Warm sesame marble, richly toned timber and translucent glass-brick walls establish a tactile backdrop that balances solidity with lightness. Veneer-striped surfaces introduce rhythm, while staggered stair landings, circular peepholes and floating transitions create moments of pause, discovery and connection between floors. Rather than dictating a single experience, the architecture encourages curiosity, allowing the home to be explored from constantly shifting perspectives.

The interiors continue this dialogue with custom cabinetry and bespoke furniture that sit comfortably alongside collectible pieces from B&B Italia, Edra and Cappellini, while sculptural lighting, including a deep burgundy chandelier created specifically for the dining room and vibrant glass installations animating the stairwell, acts as both artwork and atmosphere. Carefully curated contemporary art completes a home where every object contributes to a larger narrative.

Mrudul Pathak Kundu, Editor-in-Chief at ELLE DECOR India, comments, “Debates about design are the foundation of this home. Lovingly collected, hotly debated, each artwork carries its own anecdote.” For Iram, design has never been about creating pristine environments detached from everyday life. It is about translating conversation and shared histories into spaces that feel instinctively lived in. The Baid residence captures that ethos with remarkable clarity, a home where architecture, art and relationships exist in conversation, and where luxury is measured not by ornament, but by the richness of experience.