There is a moment in every restoration when you have to decide how far to go. The walnut top has a ring where a glass once stood. The plaster has a hairline crack that runs from the window reveal to the corner. You can take both back to nothing, or you can stop, and let the room keep its record of having been lived in. That second choice is the instinct behind wabi-sabi.
Most decorating advice assumes you will choose the first option. Wabi-sabi assumes the second, and it has become one of the most useful ideas in contemporary interiors.
What wabi-sabi actually means
The term joins two older words. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy glosses wabi as subdued, austere beauty and sabi as rustic patina, and counts them among the main aesthetic ideas of the Japanese tradition. Sabi appears often in the Manyōshū, the early poetry anthology, with a sense of desolation, and later came to mean something that has aged well or acquired a patina that makes it beautiful. Another word pronounced sabi means rust. The encyclopedia treats wabi and sabi as separate ideas; wabi-sabi as one phrase is how they are usually joined in writing about interiors.
Wabi was first praised in poetry, the encyclopedia says, but it was developed most fully in the art of tea and in the context of Zen. The tea master Sen no Rikyū (1522 to 1591) built on predecessors such as Murata Shukō and Takeno Jōō, and the Nampōroku, a record of sayings attributed to him, says that in the small tea room “it is desirable for every utensil to be less than adequate.”
On the wabi aesthetic, the encyclopedia explains, implements with minor imperfections are often valued above ostensibly perfect ones, and broken or cracked utensils, if well repaired, above intact ones. It adds that wabi implies moderation, not asceticism. That is the tradition behind the modest utensils and small tea rooms of the tea ceremony.
It is worth being precise, because the phrase has been stretched to cover a great deal of expensive beige. Wabi-sabi is not a colour scheme. It is a position on what deserves to be kept. Nor is it the same as Japandi, the recent Japanese and Scandinavian interior style: the Japandi guide sets out how the two differ.
Wabi-sabi examples: a silver pavilion and a gold one
The same encyclopedia offers a building as its example. The Silver Pavilion at Ginkakuji in Kyoto, it says, is the epitome of sabi. Its exterior was meant to be covered in silver foil, in emulation of the Golden Pavilion at Kinkakuji, and never was.
The Golden Pavilion shows the contrast. The original burned in 1950, a replica was built in 1955, and in 1987 the building was covered in gold leaf, as its creator had intended. The encyclopedia calls the result “breathtakingly spectacular” but “totally un-Japanese”, and notes that old residents of Kyoto complained that it would take a long time for the building to acquire enough sabi to be worth looking at again. The point for a room is the same: surfaces that are meant to age need time, and a new finish cannot supply it.
The difference between worn and shabby
This is the distinction that separates a room with depth from a room that simply needs attention, and it comes down to intent. Wear that has happened through use reads as history. Damage that has happened through neglect reads as mess.
A stone step hollowed by a century of feet is beautiful. A skirting board scuffed because nobody has ever cleaned it is not. The test is whether the mark records something, and whether everything around it is in good order. Imperfection only reads as deliberate when it sits inside an otherwise well-kept room.
Wabi-sabi interiors: choose materials that improve
The practical version of this idea is a materials policy. Some surfaces get better as they age and some only get worse, and the difference is usually whether the material is solid or applied.
- Solid timber, waxed or oiled rather than lacquered, darkens and softens. Veneer over board chips and cannot be repaired invisibly.
- Unsealed brass and copper dull to a warm brown. Lacquered brass holds its shine until the lacquer fails, then looks blotchy.
- Lime plaster and limewash move with the building and weather gently. Modern vinyl paint traps moisture and peels.
- Washed linen and heavy cotton soften with every wash. Synthetic blends pill and go flat.
- Stone, terracotta and unglazed ceramic take on a sheen from handling. Laminate does not change at all, which is precisely the problem.
Buy the first column and you inherit a room that gets better while you do nothing. Buy the second and you are committed to replacement.
Repair that shows itself
Kintsugi, the practice of mending broken ceramics with lacquer dusted with gold, is a familiar expression of this thinking, and the Met holds real examples. Its 17th-century Shigaraki tea jar has been repaired with kintsugi at the mouth and body, which the museum says creates an intriguing golden “landscape.”
A 13th-century Chinese celadon tea bowl in the same collection carries gold lacquer repairs too. The Met notes that kintsugi is a technique unique to Japan, so its presence suggests the bowl was once used and cherished there, whereas in China broken ceramics were typically mended with metal staples.
The repair is not disguised. It is drawn in a precious material, so the break becomes part of the object’s history.
You do not need gold to use the principle. A chair leg spliced with a visible patch of new timber, a cracked tile grouted rather than replaced, a linen sheet darned in a slightly wrong shade all do the same work. They say that this thing was worth the trouble of keeping.
Keeping it warm
The common failure of the pared-back interior is that it comes out cold. Restraint removes the things that generate warmth, and nothing is put back in their place.
Three things reliably fix it. Texture, so that a plain wall is plaster rather than flat emulsion and a plain cushion is slubbed linen rather than smooth cotton. Low light, from lamps at table height rather than a ceiling fitting. And one object that is clearly old, ideally slightly too large for its position, to stop the room reading as a showroom.
Where to begin
Start by removing rather than buying. Take one room and take out everything that is there for no reason. What is left will look sparse and slightly uncomfortable, which is the correct starting point.
Then add back only things that have a use or a history, and stop earlier than feels natural. The room will not look finished. That is the point of it.
Sources
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Japanese Aesthetics
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art collection records: Shigaraki Tea Jar (Chatsubo), 2015.300.274 and Tea bowl, 16.122.5
