Christopher Noto, a young American designer based in Singapore, created an amazing interior design for his Paris residence, a 1,320-square-foot apartment in “a corner where you see history everywhere,” he remarks — just steps from the Palais Royal, the Tuileries and the Comédie-Française.
This Parisian apartment totally reflects its famous surroundings: “With all of that quintessential French stuff all around you, how can you do anything else?” Noto says. After more than a decade in Asia, however, he’d adopted that continent, too. The solution was a hybrid. “The whole feeling of the apartment is East and West,” he explains. “It has both elements.”
The residence opens with a neutral-shaded entrance hall in which bicultural gems complete the design. Stepping into the living room feels like diving into water. The walls are lined in a silk moiré in a shade Noto describes as “greenish blue with gray undertones.”
In a city famed for its lights, creating the right palette was key. “I wanted a real warmth, and the only way to that was through color,” the designer says. “In Paris, you can use color, but I wanted to use it correctly, with no clashing tones. I really wanted to bring out the apartment’s textures and moldings, its wrought iron balustrades and more.” Almost everything he collects “tends to be natural, organic and unrestored, in warm gray and brown tones.”
The sofa’s elegantly lined back seems quintessentially French, but its leg design is pure Javanese. “What’s most interesting to me is the interplay of things that are very different but fit very well,” Noto explains, adding that in his design companies, Christopher Noto Interiors and Pagoda House — both based in Singapore — he tries “to do things that are very customized, something no one else will have.”
Surely not every designer could pull this off. But, then, Noto has Paris on his side. “I’m always amazed, looking around at the beauty of the place,” he says. “I always wonder if I’ll ever get tired of coming back to Paris, but I never do.” From just about every angle of every room that really inspires us about style at home, it’s easy to see why.
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