The home of Sara Aagaard from Dora

Welcome to the home of Sara Aagaard, owner of Dora, Copenhagens best design- and vintage store.

A superior sense of details mixed with an interest in art and design combined with a little collector mania. Everything put in to a large beautiful penthouse apartment with a view to the tower of Our Saviour. Here you will find Sara’s inspiring universe.

The style in Sara’s home is like the one in her store; far from predictable. The minute you enter the door to the very large and light apartment it is obvious that here lives a couple that enjoys beautiful things in all shapes. And many of them!

Text and styling: Rikke Graff juel Photo: Frederikke Heiberg. 

Published in Alt for damerne.

TIP: Exchange the frame with a dry cleaning hanger! Attach the pictures with small clamps. 

TIP: If you have an air condition or the like, which doesn’t exactly decorates, highlight it, for example by putting an open book on it and hang pictures up in front of it in stead of trying to hide it.  

TIP: Use string and pins with large heads to hang up pictures.

TIP: Twist colourful ribbons around the table leg.

"I like beautiful things and it pleases me to look at our amazing yellow armchair daily, just as it pleases me to pour tea from a beautiful teapot", says Sara.

TIP: Hang up a beautiful branch down from the ceiling and put a plastic bag with water on it, for it to last longer.

It is important to Sara that it doesn’t get too pretty and fits too well together. Then it gets sad and lacks personality. – I’m getting better and better at trusting my own taste, she says.

If you hold on to your own taste, you don’t have to be afraid about everything matching– because it’s you!

And it means a lot if things have a history. A home is built up during your entire life.  For example, I still have my radio, which I got from my parents for my 10 years birthday.

The noticeboard is in hessian, which Sara believes will get a revival. It has a lot of warmth and structure.

About Dora and Sara:Sara’s passion for design and decorating originates from her childhood. Her mother is a decorating architect and painted clouds on the pink wall in Sara’s room when she was a little girl. It took many years until Sara came to work professionally with design and interior. An education as Cand.merc. from Copenhagen Business School lead to a career as project manager and executive assistant at IBM. 
But in the summer 2010 Sara met her husband Anders who is a restaurateur. – He gave me the courage to jump out of my comfort zone and inspired me to combine my sense of design and vintage with my business talent, Sara says. The dream came true in October 2010, when Sara opened the design and vintage store Dora in a former butcher’s shop on “the French street” Værnedamsvej, located between Frederiksberg and Vesterbro in Copenhagen. 

Dora is a mix between design and vintage and the style isn’t that dictating. – In many ways, the store is a tribute to history. We don’t put emphasis on the predictable and we do not sell Danish classics – there are other stores that are good at that, Sara says.

But we do sell good design, which sometimes has been forgotten in a couple of years or 20. Crystal vases and decanters, for example. They are incredible beautiful and good craftsmanship. Take them out again – they decorate tremendously – especially up against the modern style.