Enter the home of Irina

We are pleased to enter the home of Irina for a chat about her personal style and love for books. While Irina originally hails from a background in finance and marketing, she has since transitioned into the world of styling and photography, which she now shares on her Instagram account, @by.arkt.

On your Instagram profile and via your lifestyle blog you often share beautiful images of your well-styled home, but how did you get into styling and photography?

My path to this profession definitely wasn’t straight, planned, or thought through. Sometimes it seems like life itself led me to the professional area and people where I feel 100% comfortable and confident.

“All things design and visual” were always my passion, I even dare to say from my childhood, when I was spending hours in my grandfather’s workroom – he was a painter and also a creative mind definitely. In school I dreamed about being a designer, even attending interior design classes when I was 16 or so. But then, as it quite often happens, I decided to pursue a more “reliable” path – in university, I studied finance, and worked for almost 10 years in marketing.

Now I work with many amazing brands, style and shoot their products, mostly in my home studio in Bavaria. I continue honing my skills and learning something new.

Your Nordic and Japanese interior style is admirable, from where do you seek inspiration?

From many places – travel experiences, landscapes and cityscapes, books, magazines, design and architecture studios, and their social media accounts, sometimes shops or brands accounts, Pinterest, and travel photographers accounts in social media are a huge inspiration for me. Sometimes a thing can become an inspiration for a styling solution or a photograph – a crooked branch, an old cup, or a wrinkled sheet of paper.

We already know you love coffee table books and use them throughout your home styling. Why do you find books so interesting?

I find books very visually pleasing and they are the best decor objects for me – both beautiful and meaningful, they add a fantastic vibe to any space, especially when books look a bit “tired” or even worn out, which means someone was really reading them, it creates that thought-after lived-in feeling in space even if you had just moved in with your books collection.

Shop Irina's favorites here

Enter the home of Irina

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