Visual Change With Light, Color, and Craft

Caloniuksenkatu, Helsinki, 2025

Parnassia's apartment building in Töölö, Helsinki received a carefully considered stairwell renewal. Though the building’s current architecture is richly detailed and historically valuable, the stairwell’s starting point was far more understated: closer to a corridor than a defined entrance. With larger renovations on the horizon, the brief was clear: create visual impact with minimal intervention. The design needed to bring presence and beauty to the entrance without structural changes that would later require demolition. Paint, lighting, and signage became the tools for the transformation.

Bringing Character to a Transitional Space

Creating the Feel of a Grand Entrance
The renovation brought an entirely new atmosphere to the space, lending the feel of a graceful lobby rather than a transitional hallway. Every element from surface finishes to signage was carefully designed to work as one unified entity. The color palette and decorative painting were developed alongside with lighting and other changes, emphasizing architectural features that had long gone unnoticed.

Light as Structure, Paint as Ornament
A suspended ceiling introduced subtle height differences and provided a base for indirect lighting that softly illuminates a hand-painted ceiling composition. The design, created by Silvana and painted by hand, echoes ornamental motifs found elsewhere in the building’s façade and lift structure. Elegant pendant lights were chosen to reflect the building’s original era, offering gentle, atmospheric lighting with a timeless presence.

Entrance With a Sense of Arrival

Design Details With Meaning
Mirrors were added to the entrance alcoves, their arched shapes mirroring the curves of the original doorways. In the ceiling artworks, the building’s existing decorative language continues upward in layers of soft, rhythmic patterns. The new signage complements the mood: floor numbers feature subtly reflective surfaces that catch the light, while the positioning of wall graphics connects with the surrounding paintwork. In the basement, vintage-inspired directional signs echo classic enamel finishes and borrow their forms from the building’s original door hardware.

A Confident Transformation
The resulting space marks a clear visual shift that is restrained yet makes an impact. The curated color scheme gently elevates the existing architecture and binds the changes together. What began as a plain passageway now acts as a considered point of arrival, shaped through collaboration, subtlety, and attention to detail.

Photography by Nick Tulinen