Ar Chanchal Batra, Founder, Design Innovations

With over a decade of entrepreneurial and global experience, Ar Chanchal Batra combines expertise in architecture, interior design, and project management with a strong background in international retail and sales at Coty and Lancome. An IIM Calcutta-certified professional, she is recognized for driving innovative design solutions and delivering strategic growth with impact.

In a recent interaction with M R Yuvatha, Senior Correspondent at siliconindia, Chanchal shared her insights on the evolving Indian home interiors market and how designers create personalized, functional, and future-ready spaces.

The Indian home interiors market is rapidly evolving, driven by personalization, smart design, and sustainable solutions, transforming living spaces into stylish, functional, and uniquely tailored homes that reflect individual lifestyles.

Designers must architect emotional personalization as a living system, not a static feature. Today’s interiors should layer bespoke elements like custom storage or family heirloom zones over a modular, tech-enabled backbone. For example, smart partitions and IoT-integrated lighting allow homeowners to reconfigure spaces for new life stages without sacrificing character.

The key is future-proofing through flexibility, using standardized smart home protocols and multi-functional furniture, while embedding emotional touches in non-structural features like art, color, or curated textures. This approach ensures homes evolve with owners, avoiding obsolescence and maximizing resale value in India’s rapidly shifting luxury market.

Personalized Interiors for Future-Ready Homes

To truly quantify design ROI, designers must go beyond aesthetics and build a data-driven narrative. This starts with tracking measurable outcomes, resale premiums (up to 70 percent), rental yield increases (up to 45 percent), and time-to-sale reductions for customized homes compared to standard layouts.

For example, a designer can present a dashboard showing how past projects outperformed the local market such as a 20% faster sale or a Rs 1.5 lakh higher sale price for a custom kitchen that cost Rs 1 lakh to install. By benchmarking these results against local comps and standard layouts, buyers see customization as a value accelerator, not just a cost.

Additionally, designers should highlight the long-term benefits of modular and tech-enabled interiors. These features not only cater to evolving lifestyles but also minimize future renovation costs, further enhancing ROI. For luxury buyers, this translates into both immediate premium and future-proofing, making custom interiors a compelling investment rather than a discretionary expense.

Integrating technology invisibly in smart homes is about prioritizing user experience over gadgetry. Designers should embed AI and automation within the fabric of the home through hidden sensors, voice-enabled systems, and intuitive interfaces that blend with the environment. For example, smart lighting, climate control, and security systems can be seamlessly woven into walls, furniture, or architectural details, ensuring technology supports rather than dominates the space.

Personalized, tech-enabled, and flexible interiors turn homes into future-ready spaces that deliver lasting emotional, cultural, and financial value.

Also Read: Design Innovations: Elevating Brands through Functional Interior Designs

The New Era of Indian Home Interiors

The key is to maintain warmth by focusing on tactile materials, natural light, and personalized aesthetics. Designers can use earthy palettes, textured fabrics, and curated art to create emotional resonance, ensuring that even in a tech-enabled home, the space feels human and inviting. This approach ensures that technology enhances daily living without compromising the warmth and character that define personalized interiors.

To adapt to India’s $50B+ interior market by 2030, firms are blending global luxury standards with region-specific aesthetics and materials. In Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities, this means curating designs that reflect local cultural identity using traditional craftsmanship, regional motifs, and locally sourced sustainable materials while integrating global luxury touches like smart home systems and premium finishes. For example, a designer might pair handcrafted Rajasthani woodwork with Italian marble countertops, or use locally woven textiles in modern silhouettes.

This approach not only resonates with local buyers but also attracts urban migrants and NRIs seeking authenticity. By leveraging local artisans and sustainable practices, firms maintain global luxury standards while ensuring cultural relevance, driving both market differentiation and premium pricing in emerging cities.

To measure cultural, ecological, and emotional value in one design framework, firms are adopting holistic scoring systems that go beyond traditional metrics. Cultural value is quantified by tracking the integration of local craftsmanship, heritage motifs, and community engagement such as the percentage of locally sourced materials or artisan collaborations. Ecological value is measured through lifecycle assessments: energy efficiency, use of sustainable/recycled materials, and waste reduction during construction and operation. Emotional value is gauged via post-occupancy surveys, focusing on resident satisfaction, sense of identity, and connection to the space.

Looking Ahead

By combining these metrics into a single dashboard such as a ‘Design Impact Score’ firms can demonstrate how each project delivers not just aesthetic excellence, but also cultural authenticity, environmental responsibility, and emotional resonance. This framework helps buyers and investors see interiors as multidimensional assets, not just physical spaces.