The face behind Anna Carin Design, Anna-Carin McNamara is a Swedish-born interior design who has a Master’s degree in Interior design which she was award with from the Royal College of Art in London. After getting her degree, she traveled to Syndey and opened up her own interior design business, which you should already know ‘Anna Carin Design’.
Anna, being the founder and director of the company has structured all projects to be focused on and inspired by other high-end Scandivantion interiors, certainly an acquired taste but perfect for that sub-set niche of people who can’t get enough of work – perhaps that’s why she is so successful.
With her Forsa rug collection in full force, which she is in collaboration with Designer Rugs, she has clearly gone back to her Swedish roots as you can see from the designs and details. Because of this collection, she was a finalist in the 20014 Good Design Awards.
With this great but disappointing news, she found more success thanks to the number of features she had on popular publications, including:
- Australian House & Garden
- Belle
- Vouge Living
- Home Beautiful
These days, she is now working on even more products for her clients under the ‘Anna Carin Design’ brand and the studio as a collective is also working on larger products for more commercial clients in the regions of Australia and Scandinavia.
Interior Projects
As you may know, Anna Cartin is best known for her work she has produced for clients looking to renovate an entire room, interior design, and for someone who is looking for a more bespoke piece, in most cases its something inspired by her rug collection.
Because of this, I think its best to talk about the type of projects she takes on with examples of some past completed work so that you are able to get a true feel of what we are talking about and what exactly makes Anna Carin Design such well-known brand within the interior design industry.
Just like Anna, interior designers sometimes focus on more than one specific group or people, being commercial or residential, and she does exactly this, so from little to big projects, Anna Carin skill set is always put to good use by her clientele.
Interior Design
One of my most favourite project she has completed is that of a Sydney Penthouse renovation. Because since its a penthouse, you have a lot of space to work with, your canvas is huge. And with canvas’ sometimes you imagine to small and that totally messes up your flow of design, however, Anna has shown her true self when recreating this space and has managed to use every space perfectly, manipulating the design with specific pieces to ensure a place you wouldn’t want to leave.
For example, if you look at the photo below, take notice of the wine bottle within the wine rack, its such a cute touch but its really clever how she incorporated something that has an everyday use into a work of art. If I lived here, I would even go Teetotal just so those wine bottle can always be featured as a pretty touch to the room.
Forsa Rug Collection
From large room redesigns to creating rugs, Anna Carin collaborated with Designer Rugs to create a one-off collection of Scandinavian inspired rugs. Looking at them, they are certainly ‘out there’ in terms of their style and there seems to be nothing traditional about them, discluding the obvious Scandinavian inspired details, which makes them even more beautiful because of their uniqueness.
A blurb from Designer Rugs site on how Anne-Carin came up with all of the rugs in the Forsa Collection:
“Growing up on a farm in the South of Sweden, Anna-Carin’s rug collection is the embodiment cross-cultural pollination. Her unique aesthetic is very much the product of a diverse life journey. An accomplished interior designer with a body of work that spans the globe from Europe to South-East Asia to Australia; Anna-Carin’s past and her childhood experiences have hewn a wonderful narrative for her first collection of rugs. Traditionally, nomadic rug designs were often inspired by a myth or a poem and the rug would reinforce and illustrate the story. As a modern nomad each of Anna-Carin’s designs tells a story from her childhood. Each design in The Forsa Collection recounts a childhood recollection, each one abstracted and renewed. A Swedish sensibility reflected in these Nepalese hand knotted pieces in Tibetan wool and silk. Based in Sydney, Australia, Anna-Carin Design specialises in high-end residential, retail and hospitality interiors. “
Taken from Designer Rugs
If I had to choose, the ‘Pike’ rug is probably my favorite, since its the one that drew my eye as soon as I landed on the page and the Pike name is also fitting as I enjoy doing a spot of finishing now and again so this particular one resonates with me the most.
Here’s what inspired Anna to create such a gorgeous rug:
“My dad loves fishing. In the evenings after a long days on the farm, he would go to the “hulta” lake and come home with “Esox Lucius” (Northern Pike) – we would eat them with cream.”
See the original post her
Make a Home to Love
To be released in early April, Make a Home to Love is a home and maintenance book created by Anna-Carin to help those who enjoy looking at beautiful interior but have no idea where to start. She’s sort of your personal interior designs, just on 192 pages instead of stood next to you giving you advice on what to do next.
To be published by Brio Books, this is the first book of hopefully many more from Anna, this will also set the tone if whether or not she will go on to continue creating books of what you can do with your interior design space, so fingers crossed this is going to be a smash hit!
This book is to be published with this blurb; take a read to get a little more context about what Make a Home to Love is going to be all about:
“Anna-Carin McNamara is a Swedish-born interior designer with a Master’s degree in Interior Design from the Royal College of Art in London. She is the founder and director of ANNACARIN.Design, a Sydney-based interior design studio that specialises in high-end Scandinavian interiors. Her Forsa Rug Collection for Designer Rugs, inspired by her Swedish roots, was a finalist in the 2014 Good Design Awards. Anna- Carin’s work has been featured in many publications, including Vogue Living, Belle, Home Beautiful, and Australian House & Garden. She is currently developing further products under the ACD brand and the studio is working on a wide range of projects in both Australia and Scandinavia..”
See the full blurb and more about the book here.
Just reading this gets me excited for the book so I can get the knowledge required to finally be able to transform my home into a space I love.
