A place for worship and prayer, without having to leave home

Practitioners of Hinduism, particularly in India, have long-created pooja rooms or areas in their homes; the word pooja, sometimes spelled puja, refers to the Sanskrit word for worship. A pooja room usually has an altar, mandir or table supporting idols and pictures of Hindu gods. They are used for solitary or communal prayer, worship and meditation, and are often decorated for special ceremonies during festivals such as Diwali, said Pallavi Chhelavda, a consultant in Vastu Shastra, a set of architectural-design principles based on Indian traditions.

As the population of Indian-Americans in the U.S. has grown, more interior designers, home builders and developers are specializing in accommodating the demand for pooja rooms.

Do-it-yourself pooja-room decoration tutorials are popular on social media. A fixture on Mindy Kaling’s hit Netflix comedy “Never Have I Ever," about a first-generation Indian-American teenager, were scenes of prayer in front of the Vishwakumar family’s pooja area—an armoire filled with pictures and statues of deities. Some homeowners have dedicated 400-square-foot backyard structures as pooja rooms and outfitted them in marble and custom murals, with budgets topping $100,000.

“Growing up in the U.S., we never saw people like us. You never saw things catered to us. Now, I can’t begin to tell you how many more people are catering to our culture where we kind of have found a sense of identity that we finally belong here," said New York City-based interior designer Nikita Madhyani, whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from India in the 1980s and who now offers pooja-room design services.

There were about 4.8 million Indian-Americans in the U.S. in 2020, up about 50% from 2010, according to AAPI Data, a research organization focused on Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders. About half of Indian-Americans identify as Hindu, according to Pew Research.

Kulkarni and her husband, information-technology executive Sumeet Borwankar, paid $350,000 for their roughly 3,300-square-foot home in 2015, shortly after Kulkarni moved from India to the U.S. to join her husband. Initially, they set up idols and pictures of Hindu gods and goddesses including Annapurna, the goddess of food and nourishment, on the kitchen’s granite countertop. Overhead cabinets made the space feel cramped, but she said it was important to have a dedicated area for her own religious practice and to teach their children about their traditions. Last year, she and her husband spent about $15,000 to renovate the area, she said.

“They should know what our traditions are back in India," said Kulkarni of their 11-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son. “So that’s why I just wanted to make it better."

Kulkarni’s new pooja area has a roughly $1,000 tiled wall with a brass sign from Etsy of the Sanscrit letter “Om" used in meditation, she said. She commissioned contractors to build the mandir, a structure used to hold idols. It cost about $7,000 and has steps and overhanging, backlit eaves draped in bells and two hanging peacock statues, said Dallas-based interior designer Renuka Sardesai of Blueberry Hill Designs.

Sardesai first renovated a pooja room in 2021 as part of a larger makeover of a client’s home, she said. Since then, her Instagram posts showing off her initial project and Kulkarni’s renovation have elicited numerous inquiries for her services across the country. She has also started working with clients virtually. “Since I’m from the same background and can relate to their needs, they are more comfortable talking to me," said Sardesai.

Arranging floor plans for pooja rooms often involves putting a bonus room in the northeast, north or east corner of the house and moving bathrooms away from the pooja room, though each family’s needs can vary, said Vivek Puri of Classic Homes in Chantilly, Va., who has customized about 30 to 40 homes to include pooja rooms.

Often, if families don’t have enough space to allot an entire room to prayer, they combine it with a home office or living room, said interior designer Madhyani. Special features might include ventilation for fire offerings or drainage for bathing idols, depending on the Hindu tradition, she said.

Pooja rooms are often decorated in bright colors, though calming neutrals are popular with second- or third-generation Indian-Americans, said Madhyani, who has helped design several acquaintance’s pooja rooms and now has two pooja-room renovation projects lined up in 2025. The atmosphere is often rounded out with sensory experiences like natural light or colored LED lights, running water and preprogrammed music, said Madhyani. People often choose marble, sevan wood and crystal chandeliers, as they are considered spiritually beneficial, said Chhelavda, who is based in the Orlando, Fla., area.

In Buckhead, an upscale neighborhood of Atlanta, a terrace with a foot shower opens through french doors to a room with marble floors and a Ganesha statue in an arched alcove set up as an altar. Married entertainment-technology executives Rajiv and Sheila Deshpande, 71 and 68, light a lamp in the room and pray each night before bed.

The pair custom-built their eight-bedroom home in 2011, in part because they couldn’t find a home they liked with a layout suitable to their ideal pooja room, said Sheila, who moved to the U.S. for her studies in 1979. Their old house, which they tore down for their new home’s construction, only had room for a small alcove dedicated as a pooja area, said Rajiv, who joined her in the U.S. in the early 1980s.

“One of the main reasons I decided to design and build my own home rather than get a home on the market was because I knew I wouldn’t find a home with a pooja room. So I said only if I build it myself can we actually have a pooja room," said Sheila. The pair paid about $580,000 for the property with its original ranch house in the 1990s, according to public records.

The pooja room is located in the northeast portion of the house, central to the kitchen, said Sheila, who said its main upgrade—marble floors—cost about $10,000.

The pair invite a priest to conduct ceremonies in their pooja room several times a year to give thanks or for special occasions, such as their daughter’s wedding, she said.

Developers are taking notice of demand for pooja rooms, building apartment buildings and townhomes with layouts suitable to such spaces, said Chhelavda, the Vastu Shastra consultant. Johnson City, Tenn., developer Vivek Vatrana said that when building large houses in neighborhoods with a large Indian population, he consults with Chhelavda and orients bonus rooms to the northeast, far from bathrooms, to entice buyers who might want to use the extra room for prayer.

Sometimes, home builders include a built-in alcove with shelving for displaying idols, or even supports for a swing hanging from the ceiling where idols sit, depending on the specific tradition being followed, said Puri. Designing floor plans with space for pooja rooms isn’t complicated, but changes down the line can add to the expense of moving a bathroom or pipes, so planning is important, he said.

Private-equity investors Charles Dadoo and Gretchen Barlow-Dadoo, 49 and 43, chose Puri to build a roughly 15,000-square-foot home on their 1-acre lot in Fairfax, Va., in 2020 because of his experience building pooja rooms.

The Dadoos are still putting the finishing touches on their pooja room, as the pandemic and moving into a new home delayed the completion of the room’s design, said Gretchen. Now that they finally have the bandwidth for the project, they pushed to have it completed in time for Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, beginning Oct. 31, said Gretchen, whose in-laws live with them and spend about two to three hours a day in the pooja room.

The completed room, which has a budget of about $15,000, will have a contemporary feel with a custom marble altar and a marble backdrop surrounded by wood panels, said Gretchen. The Dadoos plan to include bell-shaped light pendants—honoring the significance of bells in Hinduism—and wallpaper with religious imagery. They also plan to replace the carpet on the hardwood floors and add tufted sofa chairs that will be more comfortable for Charles’s parents, said Gretchen, who is not a practicing Hindu but said she wants their children to learn about their father’s traditions.

“It’s really brought our family close together and allowed us to share with the kids and see what it means and how important it is. I get a little emotional talking about it," said Gretchen.