Some people furnish a home simply to fill a space. Others do it to feel truly at home, and to tell something about themselves. Our client Mario F.’s home clearly belongs to the second category: a classic Milanese apartment with high ceilings, stucco mouldings and herringbone parquet floors, transformed room by room into something deeply personal.
Mario is not an architect or an interior designer. He is a lawyer. But in this home he has brought together personality, taste and patience, creating a dialogue between different periods, materials and colours without anything feeling out of place.
Every choice feels intentional. The rugs, too, are not used as fillers, but as true pieces in their own right, bringing character and personality to each room.
The living room: three souls, one space
The living room is the heart of the home, and the place where Mario’s layered taste is most clearly expressed. The palette is deliberately restrained, with greige walls, an ivory linen sofa and warm parquet flooring, yet the space never feels neutral. There are artworks on the walls, a vintage film poster, a white modular Kriptonite steel bookcase, and an elegant vintage armchair upholstered in mustard-yellow triangular fabric. A home that collects loved pieces, not matching ones.
In this setting, Mario chose two rugs for two distinct areas of the room, creating an emotional map of the space.
In front of the sofa, he placed a Beni Mrirt: long, incredibly soft pile in a natural gradient that moves from ivory to caramel. It is the kind of rug you feel under your feet before you even notice it with your eyes: warm, enveloping and quiet. It comes from the Middle Atlas mountains, where weavers work raw wool using a high-pile technique that has been passed down for generations. On the pale wooden floor, with the neutral sofa behind it and a large abstract canvas on the wall, the Beni Mrirt becomes the softest area of the home, a place to slow down.
Under the dining table, a deep blue Akhnif changes the mood completely. The Akhnif is a flat-weave rug from the Taznakht region in southern Morocco, traditionally made from wool dyed with natural pigments. Mario’s has a blue that is never exactly the same: depending on the light, it shifts between cobalt and petrol blue.
The surface is scattered with small geometric motifs in red, yellow and orange, as precise as embroidery on a garment. Seen up close, they reveal all their complexity: diamonds, crosses and ancestral signs handed down by Amazigh weavers from one generation to the next, like a silent alphabet. Choosing a flat-weave rug under a table is also a practical decision, one we often recommend to clients who are unsure whether to choose a flat weave or a knotted-pile rug.
Paired with the iconic black lacquered Chiavari chairs by Fratelli Levaggi, with their natural woven seats, and the white glass tabletop, the Akhnif was one of the most natural choices for Mario. Its deep, textured blue grounds a play of lightness and weight, old and contemporary, that works beautifully.
The dusty blue hallway: a private gallery
Hallways are often overlooked, treated as spaces to pass through rather than places in their own right. Not in Mario’s home. The walls are painted in a strong dusty blue, almost a grey sky tone, forming the backdrop to a gallery of small framed works: illustrations, prints and contemporary artworks, hung with the free yet precise logic of someone who knows what they loves.
A very slim burnished iron console, almost graphic in its simplicity, holds a fragrance diffuser and little else. To one side, a cylindrical Lisa Corti pouf in yellow and blue floral fabric, with a black-and-white checked base, adds a deliberately pop note.
On the original terrazzo floor, which Mario wisely chose to preserve, runs a recycled denim rug from our Casa Denim collection, entirely made from recycled denim in shades of blue.
The technique is Boucherouite, the Moroccan tradition of rugs made from recovered textiles, here applied to an unexpected material. The result is a piece with a double story: the story of Amazigh craftsmanship and the story of denim, a material that belongs to popular culture all over the world. In Mario’s blue hallway, this rug feels as if it had always belonged there, casually and elegantly connecting a Milanese home to something much further away.
The bedroom: colour and lightness
The bedroom is a successful exercise in balance. The walls return to the same greige used in the living room, the bed is dressed in navy blue with cherry-red cushions, a strong colour accent Mario does not shy away from, and a white paper lantern hangs from the ceiling with the simplicity of a well-chosen object. A single transparent polycarbonate Ghost chair by the window brings lightness and a touch of irony. On the wall, a graphic artwork in a gilded frame. On the dark wooden desk, just a few carefully chosen objects.
On the floor, placed like a runner at the foot of the bed, is a Glaoui rug: a flat weave with raised geometric motifs, also from the Taznakht region, like the Akhnif. But where the Akhnif has the compact depth of blue and the discretion of its embroidered details, Mario’s Glaoui is festive, with a light grey ground and colourful red, green and yellow motifs that look embroidered with sewing thread, but are actually woven directly on the loom.
It is a rug that asks to be looked at closely, and discovered slowly. Long and narrow, it runs along the foot of the bed like a story told in episodes.
The bathroom: stripes, cotton, simplicity
The bathroom is bright and well resolved, with large-format light grey tiles, a wall-hung vanity and a clean, minimal mirror. On the floor, adding a domestic and cheerful touch, is a small hand-woven cotton rug with pink and white stripes and neat fringes. Simple, direct, precise.
In a room built around material quality and clean lines, it is the right choice: a cheerful accent that does not compromise on comfort. And it is machine washable.
The kitchen: where craftsmanship becomes irreverent
The kitchen has its original terrazzo floor, complete with decorative border, another happy choice by Mario, who kept the old where the old had value. There are no wall cabinets, the surfaces are clear, and the hob is set into a niche that gives the room order and depth. On the open shelves, a few beloved objects: a painted ceramic casserole dish, a vintage kettle.
At the centre of the room, on the floor, a Zindekh explodes: small in size, enormous in character. Technicolour, geometric, with saturated blocks of red, neon green, orange, purple and shocking pink, it becomes almost an abstract artwork in the kitchen.
The Zindekh is a Berber rug from southern Morocco, originally created as a functional everyday object. Here, beside the historic terrazzo floor and Mario’s essential kitchen, its energy does not clash at all. On the contrary, it is exactly the kind of courageous choice that makes this home feel real.
Mario’s home is not afraid of itself. Every room has its own personality, every choice is guided by a precise aesthetic, never random, never ostentatious. Rugs play a fundamental role in this story: not as surface decoration, but as structural elements in the identity of each space. Pieces that carry a story, a place, a hand. Exactly as they should.
