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  Bajaj's living room has a muted colour scheme and looks out on the central courtyard, which is filled with indoor palm trees and plants

By her own admission, Monisha Bajaj is content with her lot in life. Her home is a labour of love, says Bajaj who's casually dressed in a cotton dress and wedges. She's not wearing any make-up and her long hair has been left dishevelled. The well-known prt designer has kept her home in Gurgaon minimalistic and relied on a sense of balance rather than on extra frills.

'We built this house a decade ago, when we were expecting our first child. Sometimes we felt that the baby would arrive before the house was ready,' she recalls. It was quite a race against time for her husband Anil Lepps (who's the CEO of Indiabulls) and her, she says, adding: 'A house is beautiful when it looks like a home. It should be functional, practical, yet lived-in and warm. Who wants to live in a five-star hotel?' She took up interior designing some years ago and this house was one of her first projects.

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  Bajaj says a house is beautiful when it feels like a home and not a five-star hotel

Her home, which sits on a 600-square-yard plot, is split into three floors and is built around a central courtyard. The exteriors are done in white-washed bricks that give it a Grecian feel. Scores of potted plants and hedges soften the painted brick look. Indoors too, the central courtyard is packed with tall indoor palm trees and a variety of plants. 'I'm drawn towards spaces that exude positive energy and are developed around nature,' she says.

The split-level ground floor has a spacious living room on the upper level while a bar, kitchen and dining room are on the lower one. Glass sliding doors and a glass wall in the living room create a striking effect. The beige sofas, the muted tones on a vintage centre table, bare white walls and minimal furniture give the area a roomy feel. A cane sun-bed with fuchsia pink upholstery adds the only dash of colour.

'The kitchen is the most important space in the house for me as I love to bake. So it had to be functional yet beautiful,' says Bajaj. The spacious kitchen has Italian marble flooring and countertops and also a striking silver chandelier that lends it a very different and positively opulent feel. The dining island within the kitchen is where the family has meals when they're on their own. 'The family that eats together...' she quips.

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  A multitude of potted plants soften the painted-brick look of the exterior

For more formal dinner parties, there's the bar which, unusually, has wood panelling on the ceiling that matches with the earthy tones of the bar chairs and lounge sofas. The tiny nook is accentuated with artworks of gold and silver leafing on the wall. There's a dining room right next to the kitchen along the central courtyard. The dining area has quite an eclectic choice of furniture with a distress finish console table on one side and a glass-top dining table with high-back chairs done in velvet upholstery in the centre.

The first floor has a cosy recreational room complete with leather couches, a large television, gaming console, music system and framed family photographs. Adjacent to the living room is the master bedroom.

The bed with a distressed look and a stand-alone trunk, together with a some kitschy cushions, exude old-world charm. A large bay window overlooking a sun deck brings in ample natural light. 'I love the sun at this time of the year,' she says, looking out of her window, 'My husband and I must have our morning tea on the sun deck. It's like a morning ritual and that's when we discuss the day's to-do lists.'

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  A large bay window overlooking a sun deck allows plenty of natural light into the sprawling master bedroom; (Above) Bajaj was very particular that the kitchen and bathrooms should be extra-large. The master bathroom is a giant space complete with a double washbasin and huge bathtub

There's a large walk-in closet — a must for a fashion-lover — next to a very large, attached bathroom. 'I wanted the more functional areas to be lavish in terms of space. Hence the kitchen, bathrooms and closet area are bigger in proportion,' she says.

Bajaj's two children, Mishka, 10, and Rehaan, 9, enjoy their fun and privacy with their individual rooms tucked away on the second floor. Mishka's room is a pretty pink with soft toys and a shelf full of books while Rehaan's is a boisterous blue marked with a closet full of boys' toys. The common ground for them and their friends is the large, open terrace adjacent to the children's rooms.

Bajaj is primarily a fashion designer but has expanded her creative wings to designing interiors as well. She's currently working on two interiors projects in Goa. But she insists that her home is a work in progress and a place where she occasionally has fun with new design concepts. u