In many Indian households, having a bar at home can still feel socially and culturally taboo. Our curation of concealed home bar designs from the AD archives will let you have your saké and drink it too!

An Oak-Toned Escape

A solid oak dining table with an Indian granite top sits against an L-shaped oak backdrop, which houses a dining console with a concrete top, drawers below, and a folding bar**Yadnyesh Joshi

There’s a moment when you walk into Stil House, a Colaba home with a soft hush. It’s not the silence of emptiness, but of intention. Everything here has been chosen carefully, quietly. Designed by Agavi Vora of Agavi Vora Design Studio (AVDS) for a young bachelor with plans to start a family, the 850-square-foot home balances two ideas at once: how to live fully now, and how to make space for what’s next. Light pools slowly across the dining room, where a granite-topped oak table and bench hold court under Terra Trading pendants. Designed in warm oak-toned laminates, there’s a bar tucked neatly into a console. And just behind those panels? The doors to both bedrooms, folded into the architecture like well-kept secrets, much like the bar.

Text by Rupali Sebastian, edited for context.

A Hand-Painted Surprise

Hand-painted artwork brings a playful surprise to the insides of a liquor cabinet, with tones that compliment the ceramic tiles of the kitchen on the other side.

Ishita Sitwala

For Eshita Marwah, design is all about the little things. Her project, The Autumn Saloon, in Surat, Gujarat reflects the quaint charm of an English cottage, brought to life with Indian materials. But what makes it especially unique is its layering of rich, hand-crafted detail. There’s nothing quite as chic as a design detail that isn’t immediately visible but reveals itself in an aha moment. Here, a winsome hand-painted motif adds charm to the interior of a liquor cabinet, in tones that complement the ceramic tiles of the kitchen on the other side. When it comes to concealed home bar designs, sometimes the real magic unfolds when you peel back the curtain!

Text by Avantika Shankar, edited for context.

Making The Most Of A Small Space

For a 750-square-foot apartment in Bandra, Neha Sawhney Chadha and Ankita Dabrai of O’Nest Interiors went south of beige and opted instead, for a rich selection of browns, punctuated with the occasional oxblood red and sage green. The home’s modest square footage meant that space had to be optimised to the fullest—a challenge that Mumbai-based designers are all too familiar with. Extra storage was created wherever possible, without compromising on style. “We carved out the kitchen wall to fit in a crockery unit on one side and a bar with a bi-fold shutter on the other,” the designers say. The bar features striking oxblood red marble shelving with a fluted back, adding both visual and tactile intrigue.

Text by Nuriyah Johar, edited for context.

Contemporary Craft-Chic

The bar—both as a space and as a design statement—encapsulates the home’s boldness, creativity, and sense of discovery.

Phosart Studio

Tucked behind the carpet wall, the ‘hidden’ bar features a custom-designed bar table composed of varying cylindrical forms acting as sculptural totems. The inner bar, crafted from metallic mesh and wood, creates a stunning peek-through effect that makes it both playful and dramatic.

Phosart Studio

This 4,500-square-foot Chennai home by NaaV Studio unfolds as a quiet study in rhythm—serene to spirited, bold to quiet—yet always homely at its core. That spiritedness of the home comes alive in the bar room—one of the favourite zones of the designers—anchored by a thirty-foot-high handwoven carpet in rust and terracotta tones (its weave inspired by Indian saris) stretched dramatically across a wall. The bar itself is concealed, revealed only to those invited in, with low seating and a sculptural coffee table heightening the cosy ambiance. “Intimate yet theatrical, it becomes the true heart of evenings in this home, specially curated for the homeowners who love hosting friends,” the designers explain.

Text by Alisha Lad, edited for context.

A Movable Bar

The bar is tucked away in a corner.

All beautiful homes are interesting to walk into, but it’s their unique details that make them stand out. For Neesha Alwani and Shruti Jalan—design principals at ns*a Architecture and Interiors—this 1,650-square-feet apartment in Worli, Mumbai, served as the perfect canvas to celebrate the sophistication of linear symmetry. A niche to the side of the living room hides a moveable bar with a ribbed dull-brass façade. Castors tucked in at the bottom make it easy to pull out when entertaining guests. A part of this niche in the wall also houses a storage cabinet on the left.

Text by Ela Das, edited for context.

Brass Details

Talib Chitalwala

Talib Chitalwala

An apartment in Mumbai has been designed by Atelier Varun Goyal in a contemporary yet timeless aesthetic, guided by the Art Deco building it is located in. “The aim was to create a contemporary, clean, and minimal canvas with ample storage spaces and the flexibility to accommodate future needs as the family grows. The space had to cater to various needs and be able to evolve over time,” he says. In the concealed bar, reclaimed teak wood and brushed brass shutters take hold, building a visual design language that is carried through the rest of the home.

Text by Devyani Jayakar, edited for context.

An Ode To Sri Lanka

Pulkit Sehgal

Pulkit Sehgal

Shivani Shah Jayasinha, founder and owner of the eponymous Mumbai-based Studio SSJ, had always felt inexplicably drawn to Sri Lanka. As a result, her Mumbai home holds a cherished tropical heart that is inspired by Geoffrey Bawa. By day, an elevated wooden platform masquerades as a coffee corner. By night, when the custom shutters are pulled aside, it reveals a hidden bar lined with artifacts gathered over years of travel. “We designed the bar to evoke the memory of Colombo—its stillness, its sea, its soul. When Dilshan (the husband) misses home, he heads straight to the bar,” Jayasinha smiles. A 100-year-old photograph of the iconic Galle Road in Colombo is printed and pasted across the custom-created wooden shutters that conceal a bar christened ‘Vintage Ceylon’. The space houses artifacts collected from years of travels—brightly coloured Lankan devil masks, brass trays from Sri Lanka, and more.

Text by Alisha Lad, edited for context.

Also read: 10 creative home decor ideas that are low on effort and high on impact