Anita Martinez Beijer is a Swedish interior designer and author & photographer of the book Home Life Around the World. Her work as a designer has taken her into countless homes of private customers, as well as into the global market, working for a major Swedish furnishing company. These have been exciting and fruitful years.

But she felt the need to delve deeper. Beyond the polished surfaces and stylish interiors in the glossy magazines and books that surround us. Behind the curated homes we share on social media. To homes not designed to conform to established trends, but that are truly personal and reflect the people living in them.

During 2015 and 2016 she travelled the world on a quest; what does a home mean? What makes a living space a place we call home? How do we relate to and interact with it? What qualities in our homes do we treasure the most? What dreams and wishes do we have related to our homes?

This quest took her to Shanghai, Hong Kong, Cape Town, Buenos Aires, Uruguay, Mexico City and New York. She met an amazing collection of individuals from different walks of life. Architects, designers, photographers and other creatives. Food and art lovers. People passionate about the environment. All with their own stories and destinies.

They not only opened their homes. They also generously shared insightful thoughts and reflections about their homes, as well as their philosophy of life and their personal life stories.

“I wanted to get to the heart of this issue,” she says. “This isn’t a book designed only to please the eye. Each and every one of the homeowners has a story to tell and gives us a personal view of what their home means to them. Their different approaches provide us with a sense of how our homes can reflect our own personalities and also how they, as they develop, can help us become a better version of ourselves. This isn’t a book about how to style a home, but how to make a home yours. ”

Home Life Around the World is about the relationship we have with that most private and intimate space – our home.

The sequel A Place We Call Home is scheduled to be published 2019.

Anita lives in Stockholm, Sweden and has two lovely, now grown up, children.