A converted loft in Aarhus, stripped back to light

The first thing Mette Lund removed was a wall. The second was everything she had hung on it. When she bought the loft — the top floor of a former textile warehouse near the harbour in Aarhus — it came with dropped ceilings, laminate floors, and forty years of partitions built by tenants who each needed one more room. She spent the first winter simply taking things down. What she found underneath was what the building had always been: brick, timber, and a long band of north light.

The renovation that followed took three years, and most of it does not photograph. Months went to deciding what not to add. The floors are wide oak boards, soap-finished, left to grey. The walls are lime plaster over the original brick, troweled by hand so the surface holds shadow. There is one wall of books, floor to ceiling in oiled oak, and it does the work that art, shelving and colour would otherwise share. Lund calls it the only decoration the room is allowed.

What remains is not empty. It is edited. A wishbone chair by the window, a low sofa in undyed wool, a stoneware bowl on the sill. Every object survived a simple test: would the room be worse without it. Most things failed, and the loft is better for their absence. The lesson travels well beyond ninety square metres in Aarhus. Before you buy anything for a room, spend a season removing what does not belong. The room will tell you what it needs, which is usually less.