Timeless In Toronto: Where Clean Lines Meet Contemporary Living

The elegant, white stucco residence with Tudor inspired gables and distinctive arches in Toronto’s posh Glenrose area may not look 100 years old, but that’s what the homeowners avowed upon initial meeting with Bahar Zaeem and Shima Radfar. That’s not all the design partners, who co-founded RZ Interiors eight years ago after meeting at Toronto Metropolitan University, learned. Early meetings, back in 2022, revealed a couple, now with two young daughters, who knew exactly what they wanted. “They came full of notes for a modern, clean aesthetic,” Zaeem introduces their interiors wish list for the two-story, 2,500-square-foot property. In fact, she continues, “they had a pdf categorizing every space.” Radfar adds that the brief also stipulated “high-end, good quality materials.” In short, a far cry from the existing situation of compartmentalized, constrained spaces.

The designers opted for a gut renovation. “Here in Toronto, nobody likes to keep things,” Zaeem laughs. The only exception was the sun room, which they incorporated into the main space with bi-fold doors to count in the square footage. Per usual, both participated—one led as project manager, the other focused on ideation. This time around, Radfar assumed the former role, Zaeem the latter. The approach, they explain, facilitates communication between the design team and clients, contractors, and vendors.

RZ Interiors Crafts A Modern Home With Effortless Style

Enter and voilà, the designers’ contemporary vision instantly comes to life. It starts off at the welcoming corridor, distinguished by a soffit subtly aglow with LED’s and a hefty, curvaceous plaster partition backdropping a moss sculpture. Note, this is a partition not a wall. Key to RZ Interior’s newly designed floor plan is the lack of walls. Nothing to impinge upon the interflowing, yet carefully articulated spaces. Nothing to obstruct a sight line from inside to out.

Here’s how organization works. On the backside of that entry partition stands the kitchen. It caps the clients’ desiderata as the generous hub of the house. At street-side a built-in bench cum storage signals a cozy breakfast nook. At the other end, a triple-sided fireplace marks transition to the living zone where pride of place goes to a piano, its player the elder six-year-old. Straight ahead is the sun room; the dining area is situated behind the salon.

A Contemporary Vision Come To Life

Interiors are enviable for their copious storage cabinetry, somewhat of an RZ Interiors signature and wish number two. Comprising pale greige AGT laminate cladding, metallic laminate for sparkly detailing, and counters of Cosentino’s Silestone, elements have smooth radius edges and are all of a piece. Which brings us to the palette, monotonal in muted colors, minimal in materials. Pale engineered wood flooring runs throughout. Black painted steel adds pop to fenestration framing and lighting tracks within the slightly lowered ceiling. That’s it. Not a single baseboard interrupts the clean-line flow.

Of course, there’s a stairway. Radfar and Zaeem repositioned it to make room for a front powder room, another client request. Simultaneously angular and curving, “the stair turns like a ribbon,” notes Zaeem. With its integrated LED strips, it leads to a mezzanine and the second floor where the designers built a bona fide primary suite. Though compact, the bedroom now boasts everything needed including ample closet and built-in, illuminated headboard with nightstands thoughtfully attached.

As part of their no-nonsense process, succinctly expressed on the firm’s web site, the designers asked the owners what furnishings they wanted to keep. No heavy-handed out with the old, in with the new. Ergo the pared-down mix includes an existing marble-topped dining table, its chairs, and a coffee table paired with the living room’s new sofa and rug.

RZ Interior’s work extended sub-grade, making the basement a fully used extension. Along with play space for the kids are a bathroom, laundry, and gym facilities. Within the overall compact space, “we worked within inches, to make everything fit,” Radfar sums up the scope. All in a manner as timeless as the house’s origins.

RZ Interiors Reimagines A Tudor Home For The Modern Era