Rich Jewel Tones and Expressive Patterns Elevate a Maximalist Brussels Home That’s Traditional on the Outside, Vibrant on the Inside
Belgian designer Victoria-Maria Geyer leans into a sprightly mix of fantasy and color
When Victoria-Maria Geyer first laid eyes on the home her clients were purchasing in central Brussels, she saw a stately, elegant, early 20th-century version of a maison de maître, a French bourgeois house, distinctive for its deeply pitched roof, central front door, and stone façade. It stood among a stretch of similarly classic Belgian townhouses and overlooked a pond. “I love a house with history,” she says.
Inside, however, was more than the Brussels-based interior designer, who hails from Hamburg, bargained for. Every single room of the five-bedroom, 8,600-square-foot residence was heaving with multiples of everything and anything—computers, glass bottles, matches, string, telephones—and the former owner was present. “He was a lovely, endearing man who never threw anything away,” says Geyer, whose in-demand firm, Victoria Maria Interior Design, has earned a reputation for deftly running a seam of the art historical through even the most contemporary schemes. The designer is currently turning her talents to two hotels in Paris, one of which looks out onto Notre-Dame.
That first house tour made it hard for the designer to really see much of the interior, but it did little to deter her imagination. Parents of college-age children, the clients were returning to the city after raising their family in the suburbs of the capital. “They were coming full circle,” she says.
Once the previous owner decamped, Geyer could assess the interior architecture. As part of the renovation, she moved rooms around, going as deep as the basement, where the designer determined the dining room and wine cellar should go side by side, and then excavated the abutting landscape to allow light to flood in. Up a flight of stairs, the formal living room spans much of the main floor, while the kitchen faces the back lawn. “My clients wanted a garden view as often as possible,” she says of the configuration.
Once Geyer settled on the floor plan, she devised interiors that allow the rooms to speak. “There are memories in these old houses. The walls have absorbed conversations; the stairs have been climbed thousands of times; the stones, bricks, and beams are all reminders of what came before,” she says. “I let the story come to me.”
What Geyer heard as she made her way through the structure was rooted in her familiarity with historic northern European houses. She conjured the narrative of a late 17th-century textiles importer who had traveled widely and returned with a taste for exotic patterns and palettes. Geyer pulled a color scheme she describes as “Egyptian tones” throughout the home’s five floors, selecting shades of ocher, indigo, and burnt sienna. She took inspiration from the graphic Pierre Frey carpet that runs the length of the main staircase and repeated the idea—bold combinations show up in almost every room. “I am unlike most Belgian designers in that I am a maximalist. I cannot live without pattern,” she says. Fortunately, this house can handle Geyer’s self-described tendency. The ceilings soar, and swaths of print infuse the roomy spaces with warmth. She intentionally kept most of the walls bright and saved the eye-catching motifs for floors and flourishes. “I avoid gray because this is the color of our sky 360 days a year,” she says. Though her clients are not big fans of black (nor is she), Geyer knew that a crisp outline, as if she took a fat Sharpie to the walls, was just what all that brightness needed to frame it.
As part of her storytelling, Geyer imagined that her merchant muse brought back from his global adventures not only textiles but also art and ceramics. However, she didn’t have to look very far to find pieces perfectly suited to the design. Inspiring works such as Spanish Guinean artist Chidy Wayne’s abstract painting in the living room and his Pugnator 060 sculpture in the entry were discovered at Brussels favorites Grège Gallery and Sorry We’re Closed.
Madeleine Schilling, a French German artist living in Brussels, painted the murals in the dressing room and subterranean hall. Local ceramist Daphné de Gheldere’s botanical vessel Nénuphar sits at the foot of the tub in the primary bath, allowing a bather to gaze at its intricate leaves. “I have such respect for ceramic artists because I am not very good with my hands!” says Geyer. But her clients, who happily live in the warmth and joy of their home, might beg to differ. Everywhere you look, the designer’s touch is on full display.
A version of this article first appeared in print in our 2025 Winter issue under the headline “Emerging Pattern.” Subscribe to the magazine.