A HOME THAT MERGES JAPANESE MINIMALISM WITH SCANDANAVIAN HYGGE
Clockwise from top left, ash wood from the client’ s property wraps the ceiling, walls, and floor of the kitchen with light flooding through the newly renovated space; a newly opened slatted staircase leads to the reimagined lower level that holds a suite for Reo’ s mother, a home office, and laundry; Katy and Reo Matsuzaki with their family; deep black Portola paint was used to create drama on the living room fireplace, and a custom coffee table by Bossi Friedman.
What’ s key to designing a home is understanding the client’ s needs, according to Jess Cooney. For this particular client, it was accommodating a growing family that included the husband’ s mother who was moving from Japan to live with them. A key element to the home’ s design, and perhaps a launching point that set the stage for the rest of the renovations, was right when you walked through the front door.
In writing this piece, I thought about what another interior designer, Bunny Williams, said in an interview that also appears in this issue: Every room of a house should be inviting and be used. That all comes down to the way it is designed and furnished. That is exactly what I found in this home from my first step into what was once a breezeway and is now an inviting multi-purpose playroom with built-in benches and cabinetry that go all the way to the ceiling— all made of ash wood, a material carried through the rest of the home.
Katy and Reo Matsuzaki’ s house is a combination of Japanese and Scandinavian aesthetics, or“ Japandi,” a popular interior design style merging Japanese minimalism with Scandinavian functionality and warmth( hygge). The result is a timeless yet modern space.
“ There was something about the Berkshires that reminded me of the house I grew up in in Japan, and that house was built by my grandfather,” says Reo, who was raised in the town of
52 // BERKSHIRE MAGAZINE Spring 2026