A return to the past — old-school gezelligheid. At Heemelrijck’s final location on Leidseplein, the space was missing the identity and warmth you expect from a traditional Dutch brown café.

After visiting the current venues and hospitality concepts of colleagues together with Nars, we scheduled a focused styling intervention. As always, time was the biggest challenge: the transformation had to happen fast, without closing the venue.

We brought in a painter immediately to create a strong base, patinated the walls, and then layered the interior with classic Dutch décor — all to make Heemelrijck feel authentically lived-in, as if it has existed for a hundred years.