Finca Majorca
From ruin to understated luxury. The owners of the house had waited more than ten years for this piece of land to come up for sale. The location is amazing, but the house that stood on the plot was practically a ruin. Lulu Mosquito helped with the extensive renovation, followed by complete interior decoration and design of the garden down to the smallest detail. The house is a four-wing low-ceilinged finca surrounded by pine woods stretching up a south-facing hillside. The owners wanted to retain the floorplan of the original house and to create an understated luxury ‘goat-herder’s shack’ – a house that does not attract the attention of passers-by from the road, but which really opens up when you enter it.
The house was originally plastered and painted in yellow. However, we opted for brick walls in the original Majorcan style, with large natural stones. This makes for a raw, original and beautiful look, inside as well as out. All the doors inside the house are sliding doors from Rimadesio. This provides extra space in the rooms, and the luxurious glass doors with metal bars create a cool contrast between modern, stringent design and raw, natural stone walls. For the bathrooms, we chose round beach stones for the deco walls behind the mirrors. This gives the wet rooms an attractive structural feel, which again contrasts well with the sleek, black washbasins. The mirrors were drawn by Lulu and produced by a local blacksmith. The light on the back of the mirror beautifully accentuates the stone wall at night. The floors were laid using large square tiles made from local stone which was used throughout the house, inside as well as outside, to ensure a coherent look. It creates an overall sense of calm, and strengthens the feeling of the outside and inside meeting, coming together and merging.
The colours chosen for the house are calm and natural, based on a warm colour palette dominated by sienna, burnt earthy tones, ochre, brown and sand, combined with black and white to produce marked contrasts.
The main room of the house, of course, is the spacious central patio, onto which all the other rooms open. The patio channels light and air to all the other rooms while serving as an extra living room, dining room or recreation room. The four large palms, one planted in each corner, provide shade during hot periods. The furniture in the atrium garden is by Kettal, and the dining table is from Desalto. The outdoor furniture has generally been kept in warm hues to match the materials which have been chosen for the interior.
The most important indoor room of the finca is the large kitchen/living room, which occupies the entire width of the building and opens up towards the south-facing hillside, with views of the city and the sea. The room is long, with a low ceiling, and had to accommodate the kitchen as well as the dining and living rooms. This kind of room can be difficult to decorate. On the one hand, we wanted to keep it open, but at the same time we were concerned that it would become a blur of furniture which would look messy. The solution was for Lulu to design the large divider bookshelves that break the room up a bit without compromising the airiness and overall cohesion. The bookshelves are made from the same stones as the floor so that they blend in.
The furniture in the house is a subtle mix of luxury, vintage and classic. The outdoor furniture is by Kettal, Gandia Blasco, while several pieces of furniture have been designed by Lulu and produced locally. Inside, the beds are from Poltrona Frau. Lulu Mosquito also helped the family to purchase bedlinen, tableware, kitchenware, decorations etc., from selecting the products and buying them to unpacking them into drawers and final styling.
Lulu Mosquito also decorated the pool area and all the terraces surrounding the finca. We were part of the process from conception to the finished house, ready for occupants, working in close collaboration with the owners and the team of craftsmen. We designed the garden together with local landscape artists, and a lot of thought went into all the decision-making. For instance, all flowering plants in the garden are white. We chose mosquito-repellent trees and bushes, such as eucalyptus and lemongrass. The result is a genuinely beautiful and coherent garden without any mosquitos. Lulu hates mosquitos ;-)