Beauty reigns over practicality in Matleena’s colorful wooden home: “Mistakes are easier to bear when you make them yourself”

Good things don’t come from overplanning but from experimenting. With that mindset Matleena Töhönen has built her thriving jewelry and second-hand businesses, shaped her personal style, and decorated her family’s wooden home. They all share a sense of playfulness, contrasting elements, and vibrant colors.

“As home decorators and renovators, my spouse and I are experimenters. We try different colors and materials to see how they work out. Mistakes are easier to handle when they’re your own.”

Matleena was already familiar with the Port Arthur neighborhood in Turku. The family’s home is in a wooden house built in 1898. The largest apartment in the building was formed by combining two smaller units.

Full of wooden houses, the neighborhood feels like a haven, ideal for living with children and a dog. Even so, the family has started dreaming about a detached house.

As the children grow, the home needs updates and tweaks. The most recent change is the entryway, where they added a String coat rack after the old one stopped meeting their daily needs.

The couple had no renovation experience when they purchased a rundown wooden apartment in Turku’s Port Arthur in summer 2021. The two-story apartment had a good floor plan and exceptionally spacious rooms, but the surfaces were in rough shape.

“We didn’t know what we were getting into. It was a leap into the deep end, and the project was full of surprises. The kitchen delivery was delayed by months, forcing us to live in my workspace. Our firstborn Edla was a year and a half old, and I was expecting Ruben.”

The tiled stove in the living room is one of the few original elements left. Both sofas are from Hakola. The coffee table was salvaged from a dumpster, and the wool rug is from Jotex. The framed TV shows their daughter’s artwork. Sunlight catches the disco ball, making the room sparkle.

The coffee table, ottoman, and green armchair were rescued from a dumpster. The floral painting was done by Pilke’s late grandmother. The pink floor lamp is a flea market find and one of Matleena’s favorites.

Some of Matleena’s finds are displayed in the living room cabinet. They’re all thrifted treasures.

The couple wanted to create a home that truly felt like theirs—perhaps their forever home—and where the whole family could be happy. Everything except the logs and the tiled stoves was replaced.

“I trusted the process, but I never thought the outcome would be this beautiful. From a renovation standpoint, this is our practice home. We’d do some functional things differently now, but at least we didn’t also try to renovate the basement for living space. That can wait for another time.”

They skipped upper cabinets in the kitchen to keep it airy and more like a regular room. The mirror on the long wall adds a window-like feel.

When they bought the place, the kitchen cabinets were missing pieces, and a small heater sat where the wood stove used to be. The new kitchen is by Epoq, and they hired a mason to build a new wood-burning stove.

Matleena is thrilled with a home that has enough space for the family to be together and host friends. “We don’t stay in our own corners; we gather in the same space. Sometimes the kids get a few extra minutes of sleep on the wooden sofa in the kitchen while we prepare breakfast,” she says. The sofa was initially built in the nearby Kakola, but found on the Tori marketplace.

The shelving unit was rescued from the upstairs walk-in closet, which became a bathroom. The glass and porcelain pieces are from flea markets.

In this home, color and beautiful objects take center stage. The décor is a mix of new, found, and inherited items. For Matleena, beauty is everything. Her goal is for the home to look appealing even with everyday mess, rather than just after a major cleanup.

“I love beautiful things, so I buy items I enjoy seeing every day. Functionality is secondary. My spouse and I talk about this and try to balance it out.”

“Colors are important to us. I work with really bold shades, so I wanted our home to feel calm. Maybe we’ll make even bolder choices in our next house,” says Matleena.

They wanted to keep the color palette subdued, and Matleena adds bright accents with accessories, clothes, art, and décor items. The cabinets are IKEA’s Ivar.

During the renovation, they found old newspapers and wallpaper scraps, which inspired them to create a time capsule. Pilke placed that day’s newspaper and one extra object beneath the upstairs hallway floor, for someone to discover in the future. The mirror and cabinet were found at a flea market.

Matleena’s collection of dresses is part of the bedroom’s décor. The rattan cabinet is from IKEA.

They picked the home’s main colors from a heritage palette and added lively details. The upstairs beams are among their favorite features.

They found a Karup futon sofa for the children’s room on Tori. Pilke built a cabinet from the dismantled kitchen cupboards, covering it with finger panels and trim. The wool rug is from Jotex. The wooden bed was bought from a friend. The blue table is Pilke’s DIY project, with its top cut from the old kitchen countertop.