Flights Of Fancy

With a coastal palette, Zen elements and a tropical garden, the Fahr-Becker family has created a holiday at-home retreat in the heart of Dubai

- Eleanor Joslin

With their work in aviation taking them all over the world, Jorg and Michele Fahr-Becker longed for a holiday-at-home have when they bought a four-bedroom villa in Arabian Ranches in 2013, seven years after moving to the UAE.

While Michele works in operations and crew training, Jorg has been a pilot for 24 years, with postings that include many countries in Africa, as well as Afghanistan and the UAE. Admitting that the industry is quite rigid with little room for creativity, they both relished the challenge of their personal interior design project, transforming the villa into an open-plan home flooded with natural light, with views of their tropically landscaped garden from every vantage point on the ground floor.

The couple were very hands-on and took control of every aspect of the redesign, including opening up the living room with bi-fold doors, zoning the garden, and designing their Thai-inspired ambient en-suite bathroom.

The colour palette throughout conjures up lazy days at a sun-kissed beachfront villa, with crisp whites, natural woods and shades of “Fahr-Becker blue” – a term the family coined since Michele has accessorised their home with ornaments and knick-knacks either bought or repainted in the bright blue of a cloud-free sky.

‘I’m so pleased with the interiors,’ says Michele. ‘We did it all ourselves, with no interior designers to helps us. I picked the colour scheme and repainted our furniture in a lighter shabby-chic style, and spray-painted accessories in the “Fahr- Becker blue”; Jorg would come back from a flight and there would always be something new for him to see.’

‘It’s a very light, fresh palette, and when we come home we sigh one of those big satisfied sighs, which is exactly the type of feeling we were looking to create,’ says Jorg.