At Home with an Interior Architect: Step inside Finnish pros’ homes in our video series

In our video series At Home with an Interior Architect, you’ll meet six prominent Finnish interior architects who welcome us into their homes and explain why their homes look the way they do. Does each professional’s personality come through—and if so, how?

Through these distinctive homes and their residents, the series looks at Finnish interior design and living from multiple angles and showcases many ways to decorate and see the world. It also invites deeper reflection on how well-designed residential environments and spaces support well-being: What makes a space inviting, both aesthetically and functionally? How do our preferences and Finnish interior culture take shape, and what influences them?

Join Petra Majantie in a 1930s functionalist building, where she’s created a timeless, elegant, light-filled home for herself and her son. The decor includes both design classics and inherited taxidermy. Chalkboard walls, her grandfather’s stuffed owl, her grandmother’s textiles, a Thonet Vienna settee, and countless art books speak to a life brimming with feeling and experiences. It all culminates in a giant crystal ribbon on the living room wall.

Interior architect Sisse Collander’s home is in Turku, in a classicist building completed in 1928. Collander’s home doesn’t follow any single interior style—it’s a reflection of her: surprising, multifaceted, colorful, and, in all its abundance, still elegant. Its colors and mood depend only on what inspires Collander next.

You’ll head to the city of Espoo in the episode where Sebastian Sandelin shows his red-brick 1980s row-house home. The building is perched high on a hill, so the living room window looks all the way out to the sea. Sandelin has designed a wealth of clever storage spots and other smart solutions for his home, sparking repeated lightbulb moments. At the end of the tour, the basement reveals a surprise worth seeing.

In Helsinki’s Katajanokka, Ilkka Mälkiäinen shows how he preserved the spirit of an old building in the extensive renovation of his home. Completed in 1913, the apartment building was designed by prominent Finnish architect Lars Sonck. After the restoration, the home’s original charm—with its breathtaking arched windows—has truly come into its own. Mälkiäinen’s impeccable sense of style shows in the glorious harmony created by furniture and art pieces of different eras, along with witty details.

Elina Siltanen-Sjöberg’s home features in an episode that takes you to a Art Nouveau-style building completed in 1902 in Helsinki’s Ullanlinna. Elina has designed an interior where every single object truly has its own place—including her collection of blue-and-white pots. Classic moldings and furnishings transport you abroad, to another time and place.

Hanni Koroma’s two-room apartment in Helsinki’s Kruununhaka is decorated with beautifully timeworn tones and her own artworks. The home also features furniture designed by Hanni. The view from the windows of the early-1900s Art Nouveau building calls to mind an ancient Southern European city.

The series also shows what the work of an interior architect looks like in practice and what the pros think about a variety of topics related to their field. How do they use color in their projects? What do they think about following trends?

The At Home with an Interior Architect series is edited by Kari-Otso Nevaluoma. The series is directed by photo and video producer Kim Kauppinen from A-lehdet’s photo desk, which is also home to the episodes’ cinematographers Antti Vettenranta and Hannes Paananen.