Behind the Build: Our Glasshouse Estate Project

Project Overview

The Glasshouse Estate is a 6,400 sq. ft. private residence in South Delhi — a property of extraordinary architectural ambition, designed by the client's architect to maximise natural light through floor-to-ceiling glazing on three sides. Our brief from the client was equally ambitious: create an interior flooring and surface treatment strategy that could hold its own against the drama of the architecture without competing with the views.

This is the story of how we delivered one of our most technically challenging and aesthetically rewarding projects to date.

The Challenge: Flooring That Disappears

When you have walls of glass framing a garden on three sides, the last thing you want is a floor that screams for attention. The client's vision was clear: the flooring should feel like a natural extension of the outside landscape — organic, warm, and utterly refined. At the same time, it needed to handle the practical realities of a family home: two young children, a dog, frequent formal entertaining, and Delhi's humidity cycles.

"We needed a floor that felt like the earth itself had been polished and brought inside."

Phase 1: Material Selection

After three site visits and an extensive material testing process, we arrived at a two-material strategy:

• Ground Floor: 240mm wide-plank engineered oak in a custom UV-oiled finish — chosen for its connection to the garden and its ability to handle the radiant underfloor heating system beneath
• Upper Floors (Bedrooms & Study): Hand-tufted wool carpet in a custom ivory and sage colourway — commissioned through our bespoke carpet division for this project specifically
• Utility & Kitchen Zones: Large-format EVT (Engineered Vinyl Tiles) in a slate-grey stone look with matte finish — waterproof, durable, and visually seamless with the oak in adjacent areas

Phase 2: Acoustic Engineering

With open-plan spaces of this scale, acoustic management was critical. We specified our premium acoustic underlay beneath the upper-floor carpets, and a thermal-acoustic combination membrane beneath the ground-floor engineered wood. The result: zero audible footfall transmission from the upper floors, and a measured ambient noise reduction of 18dB in the main living area.

Phase 3: Installation

The ground-floor oak installation spanned 11 working days. The primary challenge was the underfloor heating system: engineered wood must acclimate to the specific humidity and temperature profile of the space before installation, and we allowed 8 days of controlled acclimatisation before our installation team began laying. Every board was hand-selected for grain consistency and manually inspected before fitting.

The carpet installation on the upper floors was completed in 3 days — our bespoke carpet was delivered with a 5mm pre-attached acoustic backing, eliminating the need for a separate underlay installation phase.

The Result

The Glasshouse Estate now stands as one of our proudest portfolio projects. The client's words at the handover said it better than we could: "Walking on these floors feels like the house has been alive for 100 years. It's exactly what we imagined, except better."

If you're working on a project of similar ambition, we'd love to hear about it. Our design consultation process begins with a conversation — and often ends with something extraordinary.