An antidote to visual noise

Humming Tree Architects strip a Bengaluru home down to solace

22 Sep 2026

After a day spent moving through airports, meetings, traffic and screens, the last thing you want is to come home to another room that triggers an overstimulation episode. For the homeowners of this 5,000 sq ft Bengaluru residence, that was exactly what they asked Humming Tree Architects to do, and it was almost comically straightforward: could they make a home that felt like silence? It was an interesting proposition for a practice known for expressive, layered interiors, but Arun Shekar and Mohammed Afnan took the brief seriously. Instead of filling the house with things to look at, they designed around how the homeowners wanted to feel: far removed from the demands of running their businesses.

"One of the most meaningful pieces in the home is the silk Persian rug collected by the clients in Istanbul in the 1980s, now displayed as a tapestry in the bedroom"

Arun Shekar and Mohammed Afnan

Photography by Studio f/8

A place to put the day down

The house works almost entirely within beige, sand, taupe, warm walnut, cognac leather and ivory. On paper, it sounds like the moodboard for every third contemporary home. In reality, the palette gives the materials somewhere to speak. Textured plaster replaces decorative walls, brushed metal catches light, timber brings warmth, woven leather introduces a roughness that keeps the palette from becoming too polished. There is very little visual shouting. Even the references to nature are subtle: charcoal forests drawn across the bedroom walls, while organic textures and hand-drawn landscapes create the feeling of looking somewhere wooded and still. Furniture and objects made by artisans in Lucknow add a richness that permeates the space. This is a home where repetition is not necessarily boring. Sometimes it is exactly what allows you to switch off.

Photography by Studio f/8

The luxury of being unoccupied

In the living room, a folded stainless-steel artwork by KALA Art Objects reflects its surroundings and changes with the light, introducing movement into the room. The master bedroom’s hand-drawn woodland mural disappears behind the headboard like a landscape. Lighting does much of the emotional work: softly glowing lamps and intimate sconces take over as the day ends, turning the house from an airy daytime interior into something more cocooning. Then there is the powder room, where dark timber and dramatically veined marble briefly break the rules. It is darker, richer and more cinematic than the rest of the house. The most affecting object, however, is the least obviously designed. A silk Persian rug that the homeowners bought in Istanbul in the 1980s now hangs as a tapestry in the bedroom. It carries the history of their early business years into a house otherwise designed to feel free of visual noise. And that is what makes the house feel so contemporary.

We exist in an era where well-framed spaces that perform an aesthetic are the bare minimum. This one, however, asks for something far less glamorous: that you come home, put everything down and do absolutely nothing