Best Interior Designers | Chachan Minassian

Chachan Minassian is one of the most inspiring and world’s famous interior designers. He defines himself above all as an eye. A precise selective eye, focused on his many activities: interior designer, antique dealer, gallery director and designer.

Born in 1961 in the Lebanon, into an Armenian family, Chahan Minassian arrived in France in 1976. After studying interior design in Paris, he joined the prestigious firm of Ralph Lauren where, for seven years, he was the creative director for Europe. In 1993, he created his own interior design agency, Chahan Interior Design, rapidly attracting commissions in the United States, Canada and Japan, as well as in Europe.

In 1999, Chahan Interior Design opened at 12 rue de Beaune in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, a discreetly elegant address at which Chahan receives his clientele. In his showroom there, a calm space that he often compares to a casket, his distinctive style can be viewed in an atmosphere of taste and timeless luxury.

As an interior designer, Chahan Minassian’s first concern is space. He will often redesign the interior spaces in a project to improve their circulation, or to create a desired atmosphere. He combines his talent as an interior designer and a creator of harmony with an appreciation of detail that lends his decors their signature «couture» effect.

His interiors have a warm, voluptuous opulence. Chahan Minassian has a passion for sophisticated materials and precious fabrics. He loves bronze, galuchat, python, lacquer and tortoiseshell, stone, contrasting this richness with the rigorous lines of his furniture and restrained colour choices. The palette is often of extreme subtlety: ivory, cream or beige, taupe, putty, bronze, with occasionally just a touch of blue or aubergine. This combination of decorative ingredients, sublimated by lighting to which Chahan always devotes particular care, gives his mises en scène their character of timeless calm. He frequently selects furniture designed by American designers between the 1930s and the 1960s, placing it in a completely contemporary ambiance to form a new aesthetic.

Working on projects, Chahan Minassian, is often inspired by particular materials, which has brought him to develop a furniture line and lamps. These designs constitute perfect examples of his style with their fine materials, timeless lines and faultless finishing. A bronze daybed, armchairs covered in python, lamps in gypsum, a coffee table in parchment. Each item is of course handmade and individually numbered, guaranteeing that it is an authentic collector’s piece.

In 2008, an extension to the showroom was opened, Chahan Gallery at 11 rue de Lille in the 7th arrondissement of Paris. Chahan shows here the work of notable American designers, his own furniture editions and a selection of fine decorative objects created by artists he promotes. In addition to this activity as a gallery director, he continues to travel the world attending to an ever growing portfolio of projects.

Over the years, Chahan Minassian has signed striking projects throughout the world: private residences, stores and head offices, apartments in London, hôtels particuliers in Paris, showrooms in New York, country houses in Quebec, villas in Mustique or Los Angeles and luxury stores in Tokyo.