Home tour: inside interior designer Patricia Ho Douven’s autobiographical East Coast apartment

Ho Douven started with the layout. She wanted openness, but not the kind that dissolves every boundary. The apartment needed layers, small shifts in level or mood that mark the difference between cooking, resting, and gathering. She mapped out zones down to the smallest details, thinking through everything from the height of a drawer to the placement of everyday items in the kitchen. The process unfolded slowly, shaped by the way the couple actually live.

Her background in hospitality design surfaced in small decisions: the play of texture, the attention to transitions, the understanding that rooms can carry atmosphere without spectacle. She approached the apartment the way she might approach a boutique suite, attentive to how light changes throughout the day and materials influence the feel of a space.

The goal was not to recreate a hotel at home, but to borrow a certain sensibility from the environments she had spent years shaping. “A home should reflect the people who live in it, not what is popular right now,” she says. A Living Autobiography, so she named this home project—an autobiographical space that is shaped and re-shaped by the patterns of their family life and adventures.

The entrance sets the tone. Ho Douven marked the floor in blush pink, beige and chocolate zellige tiles sourced directly from artisans in Morocco, where she and Martijn once spent days learning how to make them by hand. The tiles are slightly uneven, which translates to a subtle tactility under bare feet, a clever sensorial mark that speaks of homecoming. A custom cabinet stands on one side, filling a gap between the wall and an existing column, revealing only a glimpse of a painted mural in the dining area.

The dining space takes the most cues from the hospitality tradition. Ho Douven affectionately calls it the “dining cocoon”, comprising timber-panelled banquette-like seats around a travertine table. A colourful mural occupies the upper half of the wall here, while a custom pendant light above the table, inspired by a kinetic mobile, features arms that can be raised or lowered depending on the mood. A large ottoman and spare table complete the setting. These small calibrations keep the space flexible, ready for a dinner with two or a gathering with several people.

The kitchen sports a more joyful character. Its lava stone island is the anchor for cooking, conversation, and the occasional post-dinner drink. The colours are richer here, a nod to the energy and intimacy that naturally emerge when one gathers with one’s tribe. A sliding smoky glass wall connects the kitchen and the dining area, turning the coffee machine located in the former into a hole-in-the-wall-style coffee joint ready to serve those mingling in the dining space. Against one wall, a console with a vinyl player becomes a listening bar, where guests can flip through records before drifting back to the table.

Drawing from Ho Douven’s hospitality experience, the guest bathroom carries the darker and more sensual atmosphere of a discreet restaurant powder room, with a material palette heavy on handmade textures.

The artist’s studio opens off the living area through a pair of swing doors. This is where Ho Douven sketches and tests materials, in a room that sits somewhere between work and home. It offers a different tempo from the social areas, being quieter and more exploratory, and decorated with works-in-progress in the form of models, sketches and still-life paintings.

In the master suite, curves soften the geometry of the plan. A sliding door brings daylight into the bathroom, which was enlarged from its previous footprint to now include a vanity area that serves like a “lobby” where the couple can perform their ablutions. Handmade tiles also line the walls here, their uneven glaze adds a gentle shimmer, giving the room a sense of movement.

The bedroom continues the design language in a muted palette that promotes restfulness. A curved timber panel provides privacy near the bed, while a soft teal headboard, pink marble side table and bespoke lamps made of faux alabaster and timber hold the eye without forcing it.

On the former balcony, now an extension of the bedroom, a daybed offers a place for reading or simply resting with the dogs close by. “We brought this daybed from our old place and it just so happened that the size fit perfectly,” Ho Douven shares.

This apartment carries the ideas that matter most to Ho Douven: the value of pieces with history, the pleasure of materials that age, and the grounding presence of objects that belong to a life well-lived rather than a trend cycle. This thinking also shapes Studio P, the new residential arm of White Jacket.

Ho Douven leads its creative direction, bringing the same sensitivity she has honed in hospitality into private homes, where personal ritual and comfort take precedence.

When asked which part of her home she loves most, she does not single out a room or detail. The apartment feels complete in the way lived-in spaces often do, shaped by layers that continue to evolve.

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