Temple Town's Design Handbook

Most furniture showrooms are warehouses with better lighting. Ours is 8,000 sq ft inside a museum, in a renovated Kerala house — and the setting is the argument.

The oonjal is the most social object in a Kerala house — and the one most often installed badly. What it is, how it is fixed, how much clearance it needs, and how to put one in a modern home or an apartment.

Two teak beds, the same description, three times the price. Usually nobody is overcharging — they are different objects. The eight things that actually set the number, and the questions that make them visible.

The part nobody enjoys is the waiting, and the part that goes wrong is delivery day. What the weeks are actually spent on, what to agree in writing first, and the measurements that prevent an expensive lesson.

Low, deep, raked back, hand-woven cane, arms long enough to put your legs up. The plantation chair was engineered for humid afternoons on a Malabar verandah — what to look for when buying one, and where to put it.

A house near the sea or the backwaters is a different proposition from one inland. What salt air actually does to furniture, which materials survive it, and where to put things so they last.

Solid wood is not automatically the right answer, and a house furnished entirely in it is usually one where the money went to the wrong places. Where to spend on timber, and where not to.

Colonial furniture is not one style. It is three or four hybrids, made by Indian craftsmen in Indian timber, adapted to an Indian climate — and the differences between them are visible once you know what to look for.

Chains, online retailers, premium showrooms, traditional teak dealers and workshop makers. Who each one suits, what to expect, and the five questions that sort them all — including honest advice about when not to buy from us.