Panchsheel Park and the colonies around it — Panchsheel Enclave, Sarvodaya Enclave, Hauz Khas Enclave — hold some of the better-proportioned housing stock in South Delhi. Generous plots, wide streets, mature trees, and buildings put up when land was less precious than it is now.
If you are looking for an interior designer in Panchsheel Park, here is what these homes need and what constrains the work.
What these homes have going for them
Generous plots and setbacks. Unlike much of South Delhi, there is usually breathing room around the building — which means light from more than two sides, and the possibility of a garden that is actually usable.
Decent slab heights. Many of these buildings were put up with heights that newer construction does not match. That is worth protecting, and it is the first thing a full false ceiling will take away.
Mature trees. Genuinely valuable to a house — shade, privacy, and something to look at. They are also protected, so they shape the design rather than the other way around.
What they usually need
A plan written for a different household
The typical arrangement here is a formal drawing room for guests, a family living room behind it, a closed kitchen with a servant’s passage, and bedrooms off a corridor. It made sense when it was drawn.
Most families now use perhaps two-thirds of it. The formal drawing room sits unused except a few times a year, the family gathers in a room that was never meant to be the main one, and the kitchen is cut off from everything.
The highest-value move in a house like this is rarely refinishing. It is asking honestly which rooms you use, and reworking the plan around that answer.
Services at the end of their life
Buildings of this vintage were wired for a fraction of today’s load and plumbed with materials that have long since aged out. GI pipes corrode from the inside — if your water pressure has quietly dropped over the years, that is why.
In any serious renovation here, rewiring and replumbing are the foundation everything visible sits on. Budget for them from the start rather than discovering them in week six.
The staircase
On a plot house the stair is the most visible single element and often the least designed. Where it lands governs whether the ground floor reads as connected or divided, and whether the upper floor has a usable landing or just a corridor.
Reworking it is expensive and frequently the highest-value change available in the whole house.
Comfort on the west
Large west-facing glazing puts rooms under serious thermal load from March through June. Solar-control glass or film, deeper external shade where the structure allows, and heavy lined curtains do more for comfort than adding another ton of air conditioning — and cost far less to run.
The constraints
The sanctioned plan. Setbacks, ground coverage, FAR and height are defined, and the built house should match what was approved. Unauthorised additions create real problems at resale. Work from the approved drawing.
Structure. Get a structural opinion before finalising a layout. On a building of this age the wall you planned to remove is sometimes doing more work than it appears to.
RWA norms. Working hours, debris removal, where material can stand. The associations in these colonies are organised, which is helpful — and it also means the rules are enforced.
Trees. Anything affecting them needs permission.
Hard water. Standard across South Delhi. A softener protects taps, shower glass and the kitchen together, and its position and plumbing should be planned at first fix rather than retrofitted into a corner.
Access. Narrow stairs and often no service lift. Measure the stair turn before ordering a long stone slab, a large sofa or a dining table — this catches people out constantly.
Where the money is best spent
The plan. The chance to change how the house works comes once.
Everything hidden. Wiring, plumbing, waterproofing. The only parts you cannot redo later without undoing all the visible work.
Lighting. Layered and dimmable at one colour temperature. The difference between a room that works at 8pm and one that only works at noon.
The entrance and the stair, which are the two most visible elements in a plot house.
Outdoor space. These houses usually have garden or terrace that goes unused. Shade, a floor you would walk on barefoot in June, power, water and lighting turn it into the most-used room in the house.
Working with us
Pochē Aesthetics — also written Poche Aesthetics — is an architecture and interior design practice in Greater Kailash, New Delhi, founded and led by architect Niyati Satsangi. We specialise in luxury residential and handle architecture and interiors as one commission, which matters particularly on a house where the plan itself needs to change.
Panchsheel Park is a few minutes from our studio, and this building type is a good share of our work.
If you have a house here you are planning to rework, tell us about it. See also our South Delhi guide, what a renovation involves, and staircase design.
About Pochē Aesthetics
Pochē Aesthetics — also written Poche Aesthetics — is a luxury residential architecture and interior design practice based in Greater Kailash, New Delhi, founded and led by architect Niyati Satsangi. Over more than twelve years the practice has designed private homes — farmhouses, villas, builder floors and apartments — across Delhi NCR and India, handling architecture, interiors, materials, lighting and styling as one connected commission, alongside select restaurant and commercial work. More about the practice.