The design concept of the House of Pertijs was to build a store offering a total luxury and lifestyle experience combined with the welcoming and warm feeling you get from a home. Feeling at home enhances the owner’s philosophy to treat customers like friends and therefore the metaphor of a traditional ‘house shape’ was used as the starting point for the interior design. Pure white surfaces create the image of being inside a house in an abstract way. Not only the angular ceiling but also typical functions give the customer the sense of visiting friends at home. Sales talks can take place at the freestanding kitchen, on the sofa in the living area or in the more intimate private ‘dining’ room.

The second objective of the design concept was to ensure that the watches and jewellery remain the customer’s main focus. In former times, gold was associated with luxury. Many things have changed since then, but this old metaphor still applies. By creating display cabinets in the form of an oversized gold bar, the familiar atmosphere and more traditional appearance of the old watch and jewellery store could be recreated in the new loft-like retail space.

The gold bar is a unique piece of furniture, drawing attention to the products (watches and jewellery) showcased inside. Besides its quality as showstopper, when the store is closed the gold bar acts as a ‘safe’. Nine individual display cabinets can be pushed up against each other and locked. By creating this ‘safe’, most of the products can remain in the display cabinet, as there is no longer any need to deposit them in the regular safe.