Life milestones · 3 min read

Gifts for Buying a First Home

A new flat has no archive yet and a great deal of empty wall. Why that makes prints the obvious answer, and what to avoid buying for someone else's house.

A first flat is a milestone with an unusual property: there is nothing to record and a great deal of empty wall.

Nothing has happened in the house yet. What exists is space, and a couple or a person who has just spent everything they had and will not be buying decoration for a while.

Why prints are the obvious answer

Thirty prints at ₹270 is the cheapest useful thing anybody gives at a housewarming, and it goes on the largest empty surface in the place.

It also solves the specific problem of gifting into someone else’s house: you are not choosing their décor. Photographs of their own life are not a style decision, which everything else on the gift table is. Print packs → · Which format suits a wall →

What to avoid

Avoid Why
Décor in a style you like You are furnishing someone else’s house
Anything large Storage in a first flat is the constraint
Anything for a room they may not have Two-bedroom assumptions on a one-bedroom flat
Plants, unless you know A responsibility, not a gift
Anything they cannot return It is the one occasion where a receipt is kind

What else works

A photo book of the flat they are leaving. Slightly unexpected and the one people remember — a first hostel room, a shared flat with four people, the place with the leak. Once they move out it stops existing.

₹499 for 8 pages, ₹699 for 24. Photo magazines →

Something for the family who paid for part of it. In a lot of Indian first-home purchases, parents contributed. A copy for them is a gift to two households.

Cash or a voucher. Straightforwardly correct, and for a griha pravesh it is what most of the room is doing. Best format for a housewarming →

If it is a griha pravesh

The ceremony has its own conventions and the gifting is generally traditional — sweets, cash, something for the kitchen or the puja room.

An object with photographs in it sits beside that rather than replacing it, and it is better given a few weeks later when the house is actually being lived in and there is a wall to look at.

What it costs

Option Price
Print pack, 30 ₹270
Print pack with lamination ₹360
8-page magazine ₹499
24-page magazine ₹699

Lamination is ₹3 per print and is worth it for anything going on a wall in a humid city. Flat ₹70 delivery anywhere in India.

Timing

5 to 14 days from order to doorstep, 5 to 12 to Delhi NCR, dispatched every Monday.

⚠️ Deliver to the new address only if they have moved in. Possession dates slip, and a parcel to an empty flat is a parcel nobody receives.

Frequently asked

What do you give someone who has bought their first home? Prints for the walls. A new flat has empty surfaces and no budget left for decoration.

Is a photo gift appropriate for a griha pravesh? Yes, alongside the traditional gifting rather than instead of it — and it lands better a few weeks later, once they are living there.

What should I not buy for someone’s new home? Décor in your taste, anything large, and anything that assumes a room they may not have.

Should the prints be laminated? For a wall in a humid city, yes. It is ₹3 a print.

Where should it be delivered? The new address only if they have actually moved in. Possession dates slip constantly.


Part of our guide to life milestones. See also: gifts for a new baby and best format for a housewarming.

For empty walls: Print packs from ₹270 · Photo magazines from ₹499