Michal Pacułt has a knack for making the best of a bad bargain. When the Polish entrepreneur bought his first apartment (a 350-square-foot pad on the third floor of a Kraków high-rise), it didn’t matter that it was a tad too low for his liking. He reasoned that it was a matter of time before he moved some place higher (and happier). So when he found a top-floor flat in the same building not long after, he discounted its shortcomings and purchased it anyway.
Michal soon discovered surprises he hadn’t bargained for—including a light-starved kitchen, awkward rooms, and bathrooms that had seen better days—and he wasn’t prepared to tackle them alone. “I was at a bar one night and decided to ask the owner, a dear friend, if he knew a decent designer. He laughed before pointing to the person seated next to me,” recalls Michal. The person in question was Anna Jurasz, founder and principal of Kraków–based Stellar Studio, who took one glance at the layout (on Michal’s phone) and described it as “terrible, but not so terrible that it couldn’t be fixed.”
As Michal tells it, “I expected someone to help me plan out the space, figure out the furniture, and advise me on the color of the curtains.” But Anna had other plans. “When I received hyper-realistic renderings and technical drawings, I realized this was about more than the chairs and curtains. In retrospect, I can see how differently I would have approached many decisions, and how those decisions would have been wrong,” Michal adds.
It’s a good thing Michal gave Anna free rein over the design, because if he hadn’t, the interior would probably have looked a whole lot different. It would have been minimalist, classic, and white—basically, everything the present version isn’t. “Believe it or not, in the preliminary concept, we had a white resin floor, white walls and ceilings, a white resin bathroom, and plain oak veneer on all the furniture,” muses Anna, adding that her first job was to prove to Michal that dark walls don’t swallow small spaces. “I knew from the moment I walked in at the construction stage that this is where I could go wild and play with saturated color.”
If she was going to go big with color, she figured she might as well go big with everything else. So that’s what she did, customizing the kitchen millwork in burl wood veneer, specifying marble counters, and painting the ceiling a dazzling cobalt. She also added bespoke plaster moldings on the walls and ceiling and traded the original floor tiles for a handsome wooden herringbone. With cosmetic considerations came structural ones, such as whether to change the layout to open up the home to daylight. The answer was yes, and yes again, when came the question of connecting—and separating—the primary suite from the living room with glass sliding doors.
The home brims with color, yes, but also as much with art, which Michal had collected over the years but never had a chance to display (he is well-connected in the city’s art circles, having been part of an art group for many years where he organized events in many of the city's iconic locations). “He imagined the home as a gallery that he could share with friends,” shares Anna. Mind you, not all moments here are made for sharing, certainly not those in the primary bedroom, which Michal notes is “my favorite place of all,” thanks to the light that warms the setting by day or night due to the sunlight and sconces respectively. “I love the honey-colored wall lamps on either side of the bed. Sometimes, I light them just to observe the pleasant light that fills the bedroom,” Michal notes. The art and light, of course, are just a few of his favorite things. Others include the glass mini bar in the living room, and the music corner, his first in any home, which will eventually expand to accommodate a cabinet piano.
The end result isn’t at all what Michal (or Anna) expected, and yet, it’s everything Michal ever hoped for. “I find it hilarious how far we’ve come from his initial inspiration, thanks to my influence and love of maximalism,” Anna signs off with a laugh.
