Home Decor Shopping in Chennai: Where? Your Ideas Please!

We’ll head to Chennai in April to work on our apartment. Yay, a visit to India!! Where should we shop? It’s mostly window-shopping for the future as the place will be uninhabitable in April. It needs essential things like bathrooms & kitchen, and we’ll make decisions in person then.

Please post great Chennai shops in comments! You can share websites in/around Chennai, and please share address or general location and phone number if the store doesn’t have a website. Feel free to share a review of what the shop offers. This will help spread to the word about Chennai shopping to anyone reading here. For foreigners, unfortunately travel advisers like Frommer’s and Lonely Planet don’t have much to say about Chennai shopping, and we know there are some jewels there!

Our apartment is in T Nagar near Panagal Park (Wiki links for readers not familiar with Chennai). While anywhere in the city is certainly possible, locations closer to this area are more likely to be visited. Traffic and all, y’know.

Right now the apartment is full of only dust ‘n crumble, so everything will be needed. So I’m open to stores with any and all products — love to visit and look and plan and scheme!

I’ve already “experienced” Saravana Stores (whew!!) and love Nalli Chinnasamy Chetti — I return with silk goodies from there every trip. We also usually visit Spencer Plaza — I love the bookstore there and am leaving room in luggage for home decor magazines and books — and were all agog at the delights of the new City Centre.

I do not need to shop only in malls, though. I’m game for absolutely anything and have been through the smallest and dustiest and most crowded places in this planet where we uncovered gems with great stories!

Oh — I will certainly be in the market for architectural salvage and antique/vintage furniture. This planet already has enough stuff on it. Why make everything new? There’s so much beautiful furniture from previous generations to make new again.

Looking forward to seeing your suggestions! Thank you!!