VS Home Design brings clients’ interior-design dreams to life to create elegant, timeless living with an individual touch
It was through her family’s Rolls-Royce dealership that Veronica Schmidt began to understand and appreciate the beauty of timeless design and handcrafted quality. It is a sentiment she now applies to her interior-design company, the Vienna-based VS Home Design, working with manufacturers across Europe to bring handmade furniture, hand-embroidered fabrics, fine wooden floors and hand-painted silk wallpaper into clients’ homes.
“I spent so much time discussing the beauty of handcrafted details with clients, I realised I was talking about an ‘art of living’, a concept I really admired and which informs everything I’m doing now,” says Veronica. Her first projects were done as a hobby. “But then I spoke to an architect who admired this sense of beauty and said I should do this professionally,” she says. “It made me realise that one of the reasons for living is to bring beauty into people’s lives.”
Veronica’s commitment to beauty and the art of living underpins her aesthetic philosophy. She works with partners such as Moissonnier, the French cabinet makers who combine traditional woodworking with a contemporary eye to create striking designs that look as if they have been there for centuries. Austrianwood is a leader in handcrafted, luxurious wood flooring, while Italian design house Pinetti provides sophisticated accessories for indoors and out. Exquisite fabrics by Valombreuse Paris are a core element, bringing some of the freshness of nature into clients’ homes through floral motifs. The furniture, fabrics and decor of Veronica’s work can be seen in situ at her recently opened and already acclaimed Vienna showroom and browsed online.
The natural world is an important influence for Veronica, who was born in Moldova where she learned to appreciate the power of nature to cleanse and refresh a tired soul. “Everything I do is connected to nature,” she says. “All the colours I use are inspired by it. Modern housing design can be empty and cold – it has become industrial – but I want to keep those natural details that inspire people, taking into consideration what each client wants.” It’s all about the details. “Even if it’s just a small touch like a single flower embroidered on a napkin, it connects the house and the client to nature and gives them that special feeling.”
Equally important is elegance and storytelling, which can be shown via the walls. Veronica works with artists who paint directly onto silks. The results are unique and unforgettable, elevating a home with an artistic sensibility, even if the silk wallpaper adorns only one room or a single wall. It is this fusion of concepts of history, art, nature and the finest handcraft that makes Veronica such a distinctive designer as she combines these with a client’s wishes, creating a harmonious, beautiful home.
“My parents taught me the importance of nature and I feel alive in the countryside, but from my husband’s family I learnt the importance of healthy design traditions that have been around for hundreds of years,” she says. Her projects balance these elements with each project approached individually. “All the countries I work in have their own traditions and it’s an incredible feeling to go to these houses and try to keep the tradition of that country with the beautiful, natural details we bring – the textures, the silks, the materials, the colours,” she says. “These are things that connect the world but give each country its own unique shell, like an egg.”
www.vs-home-design.com