40 Interior Designs That Feel Cozy, Creative, And Totally Out Of This World

Let’s step inside spaces where imagination meets comfort, where every corner feels like a warm invitation and every detail sparks delight. Curated from “The World Of Interiors” on Instagram, this collection showcases some of the world’s most interesting interiors. These are the rooms that make you want to curl up with a book, linger over morning coffee, or simply daydream a little longer.

#1 Thucydides Papageorgiou Was In The Process Of Restoring His Childhood Home In Kapesovo, Northwestern Greece, When He Chanced Upon A Swirl Of Colour Beneath The White Plasterwork

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Adorning almost every room were sumptuous murals from 18th-century Zagori merchants, having lain undiscovered for decades.

#2 Richly Patterned Maiolica Tiles Crop Up Everywhere In Sicily, But Nowhere In Quite Such Profusion As Pio Mellina’s Open-To-The-Public Apartments In A Historic Palazzo

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#3 Britain’s Only Private Train

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#4 Hidden Behind The Neo-Renaissance Façade Of Monumental Leuven University Library Is An Unexpected 20th-Century Masterpiece

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#5 Transplanted To Tangier After Kissing New York Goodbye, Frank De Biasi And Gene Meyer Bought, Fused And Did Up The Place Next To Their Own. It Rocked The Kasbah

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#6 Victor Horta’s Home/Studio Near Brussels Pushed Boundaries For What Art Nouveau Could Achieve

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Now that it’s a museum, visitors can meander on down to discover the work of one of Belgium’s biggest architects.

#7 Fashion Editor Grace Coddington Puts Her Famous Cats To Work As Muses For Murals

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In the San Vicente Bungalows, a low-key California members’ club frequented by those in the know.

#8 In The 1950s Vladimir Ossipoff, A Russian Pioneer Of Hawaiian Modernism, Built A Mountain Cabin On The Island Of O‘Ahu

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Once the émigré solved the challenge of transporting his materials 720 metres above sea level, the abode enjoyed a 270-degree panorama of wilderness, from the peaks to the Pacific Ocean.

#9 Anyone Answering The Call Of Nature In Kawakawa, A Town On New Zealand’s North Island, Is In For A Huge Surprise Down At The Public Loos

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There they’ll be accosted by wonky floors, forests of totem-like columns, the odd whale relief and a kaleidoscope of tiles.

#10 Like A Cluster Of Daleks, The Curvaceous-Cum-Spiky Live/Work Home Created By The Late Carlos Páez Vilaró In 1980s Argentina Might As Well Be Life On Mars

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#11 Never Let It Be Said That Pakistan’s Truck Drivers Lack Imagination Or Vision

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They’ve got them both by the lorry load, commissioning highly skilled phool patti artists to turn their cabs into prettified pads.

#12 This Virtually Untouched Gem Of A 1930s Hunting Lodge Outside Paris By The Designer And Architect Pierre Petit Is Complete With Original Furnishings And Decoration

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In this Art Deco Gesamtkunstwerk all the creative disciplines unite to spectacular effect.

#13 17th-Century Riverine Flat In Paris

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Scenic-paper maestros Mehmet and Dimonah Iksel have fused French Hollywood Regency furniture with exquisitely detailed tableaux. In typical Iksel fashion, pattern meets pattern in almost every corner.

#14 The Blossom-Bright Home In Kent

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#15 Parham House Put To Use Its 17th-Century Needlework Collection With Great Effect, Inspiring Planting Schemes And Even A Modern Maze

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Plus, keeping with a tradition established in the 1920s, 30 buckets of flowers are cut from the garden and grounds each week, filling the house with arrangements – all based on the embroideries around them.

#16 Built In Agde, France, By An Unlikely Heir With A Taste For Opium And An ‘Ultimately Fatal Genius’

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Château Laurens drew for its inspiration from sources as diverse as Egyptian architecture, ancient Greek symbolism and Silk Road caravanserai. This surreal temple of dreams, recently restored and reopened to the public, would be at home in a tale spun by Scheherazade…

#17 Houses Don’t Get Any More Opulent Than Otto Wagner’s Storied Villa In Vienna

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#18 Some 20,000 Books – In Niches, Stacked On A Saarinen Table, And Steeply Shelved

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1902 Milan flat of editore Massimo Vitta Zelman, one of Italy’s top publishers of art books and catalogues.

#19 In His Bethnal Green Flat, A Former Yoga Studio, Artist Enrico David Uses The Human Body As A Vehicle For Mental Contortions In A Range Of Media

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#20 White Grapes Hang From The Kitchen Ceiling At This Ancient Monastery Orchard In The High Tiber Valley

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Until February, when Isabella dalla Ragione presses them to make 50 litres of vin santo. She has spent over 40 years searching convents, family estates and abandoned farms for forgotten species of tree, bringing many back from the brink of extinction.

#21 Lucie De Moyencourt’s South African Home Is A Gleaming Pearl In The Table Mountain Terrain

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The artist’s home is a nautical grotto and a muse for her ever-growing shop, Shellegance.

#22 Milkman Ruurd Wiersma Spent Five Years Decorating The Walls Of His Modest House In Burdaard

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#23 Wicker Is Having A Moment Again. Just Like The Pliable Organic Fibres That Form It, The Craft Always Bounces Back

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#24 The Architect Anders Annerstedt And Designer Katarina Abrahamsson Created A Temple To Mid-Century Modernism, Furnished With Vintage Pieces By Pioneers Josef Frank, Hans Wegner, Arne Jacobsen And Gae Aulenti

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#25 In The Early 1970s, This 16th-Century Castle In The Netherlands Was On The Point Of Dereliction

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n strode the late furniture and product designer Peter Ghyczy, whose antiques, ancestral portraits and space-age pieces still live in perfect harmony.

The red double doors in the first image, which were bought at an antique shop, conceal a hatch that leads to a wine cellar. Flanking them are floating glass shelves – a 1972 design and one of Peter’s first. The large painting at left is by one of his ancestors, while the oval portraits have been in the house for generations. The ‘Garden Egg Chair’ is a limited-edition model in matte silver.

#26 Fresh From Designing A Mega-Gallery, Argentinian Architect Luis Laplace Landed The Revamp Of A Small-Fry Fisherman’s Villa In Mahón, Menorca’s Sailboat-Filled Main Port

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From the ‘old village’ green tones to the rustic redwork trim pinned on the shelves, Villa Pepita sings of it’s modest origins.

#27 Tim Walker’s Canal-Side Cottage – Formerly A Buddhist Commune – Is Filled With All Manner Of Items Picked Up On His Many Work Expeditions

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The place feels ‘like a sanctuary with the most incredible energy’, says Vogue’s star photographer.

#28 This Late 1950s Apartment In Milan Remains Remarkably Untouched Since The Day It Was Designed

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#29 Wall After Wall Of Intricate Mural Decoration

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Folk-art aficionados will be humming with excitement at what the artist and honeybee guardian, Karina Czudnochowski, has achieved in her home.

#30 Design Studio Casa Josephine’s Has Turned This Investor’s Flat In Madrid From ‘Empty Box’ Into Treasure Chest

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Design studio Casa Josephine’s use of rare materials, from onyx to travertine, has turned this investor’s flat in Madrid from ‘empty box’ into treasure chest.

#31 In An Area That’s Long Attracted The Cream Of Cairo, Photographic Agent George Lang Is Sitting Pretty In The Immobilia Building, A Landmark Familiar To All Citizens

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Filling his lofty flat with antiques bought locally has been a culturally enriching adventure for the Australian émigré.

#32 When Laura Ungaro Was Finally Allowed To View The Three-Storey Flat In Paris That Her Daughter And Son-In-Law Had Decorated On Her Behalf, She Was Flooded With Emotion

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Why? The project was to have been orchestrated by her husband, the fashion designer Emanuel, but his [passing] in 2019 necessitated a mournful change of plans. As a widow, Laura would have to face the new place alone, but at least the collecting passions of her life partner were everywhere in evidence.

#33 In A 1920s Brooklyn Co-Op, Tony Liu – Co-Founder Of Diet Prada – Has Turned His Apartment Into A Study Of Romance And Restraint, Using Colour As The Mood Music

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Helped by Farrow & Ball’s Patrick O’Donnell, he’s made Impressionist blues, Dior pinks, and Prada greens unfold with unexpected harmony.

#34 One Of Italy’s Most Soulful, Off-The-Beaten-Track Retreats

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Stranded in a hilltop settlement in Tuscany during lockdown, Johnny and Elizabeth Petrucci lured a sequestered family home back to life.

#35 Traditionally Executed By Married Women, These ‘Bridal Chamber’ Comb Paintings Are Created By Scraping Away A Top Layer Of White Kaolin To Reveal The Black Manganese Beneath

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Every June, in the tribal villages of Hazaribagh, northeast India, the heavy rains come, washing away the vernacular Khovar designs adorning mud-hut walls. Somehow, their fleeting nature makes them all the more precious.

#36 She’s Ensured Something To Nourish The Soul Is Woven Into Every Room

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Tapestry artist Brenda Goggs’s ‘ex-govie’ in Canberra was taken apart and remade anew – its layout perfectly tailored, indeed, to fit the vast, floor-to-ceiling frame on which she plies her craft.

#37 ‘Step Inside The Vienna Stage. You Might Call It A Gesamtkunstwerk,’ Says Ballet Costume Designer Susanne Bisovsky Of Her Cosmopolitan Atelier

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Located in the city’s 7th district – once the heart of a thriving silk industry – the studio is part salon, part archive, and entirely enchanting.

#38 Having Relocated To Bulgaria Over 20 Years Ago, Tim Clinch Has Grown To Love Its Quieter Pace Of Life

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Here, the photographer divulges how he has found things to do in the country and, touchingly, kept in contact with his home’s previous owners.

#39 A Vast Rattan Light Shade That @_nadinejohnson_ Found In Venice When She Was At The Biennale Spreads Baldachin-Like Over The Bed In Her New York Apartment

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The blue-and-white lamp, a memento from her mother’s home in Belgium, sits on the bedside table. Next to it is a 1960s ‘Les Arcs’ chair, designed by Charlotte Perriand.

#40 U Is For… Ugly

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‘Ugly’ is a floating cultural construct. It can attach itself to anything broken, deformed or on the margins. But we can also see that with bebop jazz, Surrealist art, or Brutalist architecture, a creative rupture with conventions of beauty is often the spur to progress.

Pictured here is fashion designer Johnson Hartig’s riotous library at his home in Los Angeles (WoI October 2021).