The A-Zen of Japanese interior design

Kloeden aims to cultivate harmony and simplicity in her designs

ANNA STATHAKI

Kloeden adds: “Yugen is basically something beautiful that you can’t quite articulate — a feeling that evokes emotion, but not in an overly dramatic way. It’s subtle, unspoken and unsaid. It’s suggestive rather than attention-grabbing. Yugen is used a lot in the theatre — in plays, actors suggest things and it’s up to your imagination — in the design world, it’s the same. For instance, if you create a beautiful window seat looking out over the garden, you’d be tempted to go and sit there with a really nice cup of coffee or tea.”

Since setting up Yoko Kloeden Design, she aims to cultivate harmony and simplicity to foster balanced, calm spaces rather than a “kitsch, contrived” pastiche of Japanese aesthetics in a western context.

Particularly pertinent to this is the concept of taru wo shiru: “I actually don’t like living in a big house. You need more stuff; you have to clean extra rooms. [Taru wo shiru] is really about knowing what’s enough. Then you can … make one space multifunctional — either with partitions or furniture. It applies to everything; for example, in Japan we finish eating at 80 per cent full.”

Kloeden redesigned this 1960s home in Ealing, west London

ANNA STATHAKI

Kloeden aims to create clutter-free, family-friendly spaces that are easy to live with and complement a building’s period features and architectural quirks. “We often design for families; of course you want to be together but you still want a bit of separation,” she says.

“What we think is balanced in Japan is probably more pared-back than what westerners think. I love decluttering and I don’t think you have to fill in every wall and corner with stuff. You need to leave space to breathe and relax, especially once you add in people — in particular kids.”

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Kloeden grew up in Kyoto, surrounded by thousand-year-old temples and Shinto shrines. Fittingly, the city was originally called Heian-kyo, which means “capital of peace and tranquillity” and it wasn’t until Kloeden’s corporate job took her all over the globe that she would realise what an effect being surrounded by these meditative spaces had on her.

“Between lectures, I’d go to the nearest temple gardens for a wind-down and a little nap. I really enjoyed those moments,” she says, recalling the rustle of bamboo and dappled sunlight filtering through the leaves of Japanese maple trees.

After graduating, glossy airport lounges and identikit serviced apartments became Kloeden’s day-to-day reality: “I was travelling for maybe half the year. I felt more and more depressed [in these transitory spaces]. That was the first time it dawned on me that where you are really has a large impact on how you feel.”

While working in Singapore, where she met her Australian husband, whenever she could pick her own accommodation she would opt for a small boutique hotel in an old colonial building over a five-star condo in a high-rise hotel.

“Yugen is basically something beautiful that you can’t quite articulate,” Kloeden says

ANNA STATHAKI

Pregnant and looking for a more creative outlet — “I was very deep in the corporate world” — Kloeden and her husband relocated to London in 2010. She took a year off with her newborn and began figuring out whether interior design could be a viable career sidestep, having enrolled on a year-long interior design course. “Then the kids kept coming. We’ve got three now. I started freelancing.”

She was blogging about her career change and her first client, a Japanese blog reader, approached her, entrusting her to redesign a two-bedroom flat in Hampstead, northwest London.

Kloeden honed her design style on a visit to a Japanese temple garden. Taking in the atmosphere, the incense heavy in the air, she remembers thinking: “What do these serviced apartments that I hated so much have in common? What are the spaces that I feel so calm in? I started digging deeper about what makes you really feel nurtured, content and happy in a space, what makes you want to stay there for a long time. I was convinced it’s not just a personal thing. I’m sure it must be the same for a lot of people.”

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So how does Kloeden bring a touch of yugen into a home?

A palette of natural materials and textures is her signature, with timber playing a big part in the designs. “It’s a fantastic material, structural as well as decorative. It touches absolutely all the senses except taste. It smells nice; feels nice; if you drop something on a timber floor it’s not as jarring as dropping something on tiles, for example. And of course it looks nice.”

Botanic House in Chiswick was redesigned to maximise hikari (light)

ANNA STATHAKI

One of Kloeden’s recent projects, Botanic House in Chiswick, west London, weaves together multiple iterations of wood: layering vintage oak flooring, oak ply, fluted oak cladding and oak furniture. She allayed the client’s concerns that it would give ski chalet vibes, instead these wooden textures create depth and interest.

The kitchen/diner leading to the garden at Botanic House

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This redesign included rejigging the existing ground floor layout as well as rebuilding an extension to maximise hikari (light). “Often the connection with integrating indoor-outdoor is a core brief,” she says, and this was no different. Previously the old U-shaped kitchen obstructed the sightline to the garden from the reception area, but the new floor plan incorporates minimal sliding glass doors and large picture windows to frame views of the garden’s greenery. “Almost every project now includes a window seat,” she adds.

A custom-built hanging shelf above the kitchen island brings in a botanical feel. The front half of the double reception room is bright and airy while the naturally darker central room embraces the lack of light. The walls are painted in a moody indigo (Farrow & Ball’s Inchyra Blue) along with beautifully irregular, handmade Emery & Cie zellige tiles in deep blue for a statement fire surround. Vintage mid-century furniture adds a Japandi aesthetic — a portmanteau of Scandinavian and Japanese design styles.

The minimalist living room at the Ealing home

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Perhaps Kloeden’s most overtly Japanese-looking project was for a couple from Hong Kong. She reconfigured their 1960s two-storey terrace in Ealing, west London, creating a pared-back space incorporating Japanese elements. There’s a multifunctional Tatami mattress room divided from the main living area with shoji paper sliding screens, using a tatami installer from Sussex. Kloeden also had bespoke tatami mattresses made in Tokyo, plus a wall-to-wall oak headboard, inspired by one in a boutique hotel in Japan’s Nara Prefecture. Finally, the microcement-clad hallway was given special attention. “In east Asia shoes stay at the entrance, so we elongated the hallway and built floor-to-ceiling shoe storage, with a clear separation between the entrance and the interior. Creating storage is a huge part of what we do,” Kloeden says.

Japanese design principles

• Hikari (Light) — beyond function, light creates atmosphere throughout the day

• Nagame (View) — the importance of windows to frame nature

• Ma (Space) — leaving negative space to allow a home to breathe

• Shizen (Nature) — organic elements such as wood, stone and handmade ceramics

• Taru wo shiru (Just enough) — refined restraint