The ABBA 60/40 Rule

At ABBA, one of the quiet rules I return to often is this:

60% new, 40% vintage.

Not because design needs a formula, but because a home should never feel overly matched, too polished, or absent of memory. The pieces that make a space feel lasting are rarely all new. And the pieces that make a home feel livable are rarely all old. Somewhere in the meeting of the two, something more personal begins to emerge.

The new brings clarity.

It allows for comfort, function, and a certain clean foundation. It gives the room structure. It creates space for how a client lives now.

The vintage brings soul.

It softens the room. It interrupts predictability. It carries age, patina, and the kind of presence that cannot be manufactured. A vintage chair, a worn vessel, an older table, a found object with texture—these are often the elements that keep a home from feeling like it could belong to anyone.

This balance matters deeply to me because I do not believe a home should feel copied. It should feel gathered. Lived into. Considered. It should reflect not only the aesthetic preferences of the person who lives there, but also their rituals, their pace, and the feelings they long to return to at the end of the day.

How do they begin their mornings?

Where do they linger with coffee?

What part of the home asks them to exhale?

Where do they read, pause, light a candle, host, retreat, or simply be still?

These are the questions that shape a room far more than trend ever could.

When I design, I am not only thinking about how a space looks. I am thinking about what it holds. I am thinking about the atmosphere it creates around daily life. The most successful rooms are the ones that quietly support the life unfolding inside them. They do not rush the eye. They do not feel overdone. They leave room for feeling.

The 60/40 rule helps me preserve that.

Too much new, and a home can feel flat—beautiful, perhaps, but without depth.

Too much vintage, and the room can lose ease or begin to feel overly thematic.

But together, they create tension in the best sense: refinement with memory, softness with shape, freshness with familiarity.

A home should not feel like a showroom.

It should feel like a reflection—of the person, of the rituals, of the lingering emotional tone they want their life to carry.

For me, that is always the goal:

to create spaces that feel layered enough to be remembered, and calm enough to make someone pause within them.

Because the most beautiful homes are not simply seen.

They are felt.

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