INTERIOR ACCENTS TO MATCH EVERY MOOD
Covering 100,000 square feet, The Home is Dubai’s latest hyperstore for furniture, artwork and accessories. Hala Khalaf takes a look around
Gone are the days when the living room of every expatriate in the UAE was fitted with the same affordable, if somewhat generic, furnishings by a certain Swedish homeware brand. These days, residents are spoilt for choice when it comes to home decor, with countless international names, as well as a growing number of local brands, offering their wares.
The latest addition to Dubai’s home-furnishings scene opened last week, and is a three-floor store called The Home, located near Mall of the Emirates, on Umm Suqeim Road. It’s a one-stop-shop kind of place; you could easily furnish an entire home, complete with bathroom accessories and kitchen necessities.
The store’s three floors cover 100,000 square feet, making it something of a hyperstore, and it boasts more than 55,000 items, 40 per cent of which are made in the UAE. The Al Barsha outlet is its first, with five more expected to open across the country within the next five years.
The original concept store stocks items that are sourced internationally, but its claim to fame is that it also manufactures its own products in the UAE, says Sulin Sugathan, spokesman for The Home and director of the store’s owning company, the Royal Group.
“This home-grown brand produces 40 per cent of the bedding, mattresses and sofa sets in its factory in the UAE, and offers customers the unique service of bespoke and customised furniture,” says Sugathan. People can find something they like, and tweak it so it becomes something they love, whether in terms of fabric colour, upholstery type, size, the stain of the wood, and so on, Sugathan says.
Local designers are thrilled with this increase in options on the market. “There’s a new shop in town... and they even customise sofas and beds,” says Nisrine El Lababidi Moghraby, who is the founder and interior decorator of the Harf Noon Design Studio.
Interior designer Ash Young, who runs Adore Decor DXB on Facebook and Instagram, describes The Home as “huge”, boasting a “wide range of furniture and accessories at amazing prices”.
“I am especially excited that they have an in-house design studio, and can make bespoke curtains and sofas. I’m struggling to find the forest green velvet sofa of my dreams, so I may well test that service soon,” says Young.