From a daily gratitude practice to positivity and confidence, Buhumani Kulatunga is a sophisticated Interior Designer and the Founder of onnext Design Studios. Boasting a lifestyle of glamorous designs, Buhumani’s history reads like an enticing novel.
In her youth, she was educated at Musaeus College and always aspired to set her footprint in the creative field. Buhumani began her internship with MSN Architects after receiving a BA in Interior Architecture from NSBM, a Limkokwing University Malaysia affiliate, and gained valuable expertise in Commercial Design. She subsequently went to Florence Design Academy in Italy to get a master’s degree in interior design. Upon completing her internship, she worked as the Head of Interior Design and Senior Interior Designer at MSN Architects until December 2019. Thus, she established her business after nine years of profound experience in the interior design field.
Analysing her thoughts on Sri Lanka’s Interior Design Industry and how it has progressed, Buhumani makes intelligible that when she founded her company in 2012, the design field was relatively unknown to Sri Lankans, but that with the rapid spike in admiration, the industry has grown significantly and has become a top profession as people are becoming more sentient of its value and significance, which is quite the burgeon!
In 2020 standards, it’s no longer a surprise that plenty of people seek to design visually beautiful rooms and spaces. Buhumani’s clients range from households to large organizations and according to her, designed spaces range from austere indoor/outdoor home environments to hotel lobbies and lavish mansions. Still, no matter the size, every interior designer must work to create appealing, functional, and safe spaces while meeting the standards and specific clients’ requirements.
She elucidates that the country is blossoming as a developing nation with Commercial and Residential Development Projects. As a result of this, the number of clients who desire to do their own spaces with interior designers will increase, and interior designers will suit the client’s needs by selecting colours, materials, textures, furniture, and lighting, among other things. However, in Sri Lanka, she opinions there are material restrictions and import restrictions that impede the growth of the interior design industry.
On a more tactical level, Buhumani emphasizes that every client deserves a charming space; thus, her design philosophy is to provide a high-quality, low-cost service that satisfies their desires. As a designer, she strives to listen to her clients and provide them with a one-of-a-kind and happy experience unique to each design. In this vein, her passion for work is to approach each project with a fresh perspective based on the customers’ backgrounds and cultural values. To achieve these objectives, she believes it is critical to work with customers to ensure that they understand the design and that it is customized to meet their needs; and provide continuous support. Furthermore, as a professional interior designer, one must use their technical experience to produce functional solutions for the space, establish a story and turn it into a design scheme, and stick to more current lines as simplicity and uniformity are the keys. She discloses, “I enjoy using natural finishes and fabrics that have a timeless flair making my project unique and relevant in years to come.”
In her prediction for the Interior Design profession ten years from now, Buhamani believes that people would appreciate it even more and make greater use of space. Moreover, the domain will increase dramatically as designs will follow a more ecological approach, incorporating reused recyclable materials. All in all, she exuberantly owes a debt of gratitude to her family, MSN Architects’ CEO, Chartered Architect Shaam Nizamuddin, and all of her instructors, including Chartered Interior Designer Rohan De Silva, for guiding her in the development and design of high-quality aesthetics into environments.