In the depths of winter, Stockholm receives only about five and a half hours of sunlight a day. Which is why Liza Laserow Berglund and Fabian Berglund—cofounders of the Swedish textile company Nordic Knots— wanted their apartment “to feel like a hug,” Liza says.
“It’s quite dark and cold here,” adds Fabian. “You don’t want to leave the house. Sundays can look like The Walking Dead. The city’s just empty.”
Sophisticated and understated, the home offers a cozy gathering space not just for the couple and their three-year-old son, Ben, but for the friends and extended family they love to entertain in those dark winter months. Scandinavian antiques mix with midcentury abstract art and vintage icons by Charlotte Perriand and Pierre Jeanneret, as well as, naturally, Nordic Knots textiles. In the living area, a tasseled Campbell-Rey silk ottoman, Roger Capron cocktail table, and Jean-Michel Frank chair sit atop the brand’s fringed Elder rug. In the primary bedroom, meanwhile, their soft ochre Leo carpet serves as a foundation for the similarly hued headboard, bed skirt, and curtains. “I love having a unified backdrop,” says Liza.
“Whatever else you add, it still creates a calm and clean room.” That spare beauty, however, belies a serious transformation. When the couple purchased the apartment in 2021, after a long stint traveling and living abroad, the place was in rough shape, having been left untouched for decades. But the building’s original 1882 bones were intact, including its distinctive crown molding and herringbone parquet floors. “We wanted to renovate in a way that revealed more than it hid,” explains Liza, noting how they incorporated the kitchen, previously out of sight, into the formal living room to create a free-flowing communal space.
Today, the multipurpose room is the heart of the apartment, with stainless-steel counters and a long custom dining table crafted of solid walnut. “Everyone always gets stuck in the kitchen,” jokes Fabian. “We keep trying to think of strategies to get people to go sit on the sofa.” The couple also knocked down a wall to create a spacious bathroom where cabinetry, here in stained oak, offsets cool slabs of Swedish marble. “It’s sort of like a locker room but not at all like a locker room, if that makes sense,” says Fabian. Cozy, again, being the operative theme.
The couple first met at a downtown bar in Manhattan, back when Liza worked for her mother’s antiques business, Laserow, and Fabian had a job in marketing and advertising. The night was late, everyone was having fun, and they were migrating to the next stop. Liza asked Fabian if she could wear his sneakers instead of her heels. “I walked barefoot through the Lower East Side,” Fabian recalls with a laugh. “I’m lucky I’m still alive.”