Paris
Proportion, and the confidence to leave things old.
Paris always brings me back to proportion. Not scale, necessarily — proportion. Small rooms can feel incredibly generous when the ceiling is high enough, the windows are aligned and there is a certain rhythm to the walls. A Haussmann apartment is probably the clearest example of that: parquet, tall doors, mouldings, a marble fireplace. Nothing particularly complicated, but everything seems to know where it belongs.
What stays with me: the old herringbone floors that were never made to look new again; marble that carries marks instead of being replaced; cafés where layers from different decades somehow coexist. Paris is very good at keeping things that have already earned their place.
And then there is the way people live with art, books and objects — sometimes far more densely than I would instinctively design, but rarely without intention. It reminds me that a beautiful interior does not necessarily need less. It needs hierarchy.
I think that is what I take from Paris: knowing what to preserve, what to add, and when to leave something alone.