Arcaya Customer Design Case

A Dark House Against the Snow

A mountain residence finished almost entirely in charcoal, smoked oak and stone, then opened to a white forest.

Dark living room with modular leather sofa, oversized black pendant and floor-to-ceiling snow view

Dark is a discipline, not a mood.

Most dark interiors fail the same way: they go flat. Without daylight bouncing off pale walls a room needs texture and precise light to have any depth, and it needs every joint to be right, because black surfaces hide nothing.

So the palette is narrow and physical rather than colourful. Smoked oak, hand-troweled plaster, blackened metal, stone floors, relief tile that only reveals itself under a grazing light. Against it, three warm accents carry the whole house: tobacco leather, terracotta, and a full charge of orange in the children's wing. Every fixed element and every loose piece in it was designed and manufactured by Arcaya.

Entry & Gallery

You arrive in near-darkness. The only bright thing is the stair, lit from a concealed cove so the oak treads read as a warm ribbon climbing out of shadow. Opposite it, a full wall of cast pebble relief carries a circular opening — developed as a mould rather than bought as cladding, so the pattern wraps the aperture without a cut edge anywhere.

Dark entry hall with lit oak stair, bench and circular opening in a textured wall — Cove lighting only. No downlights in the entry — the stair and the aperture are the light sources.

Pebble-relief wall with a large backlit circular opening and a low bench — The circle sits at seated eye height — framed for the view you get from the bench.

Corridor of flush dark doors leading toward the living room — Full-height flush doors, handle-free on the corridor side — the wall reads as one plane.

Every door on the corridor is released by a touch latch instead of a handle. It costs more than a standard leaf and it is the reason the hallway reads as one continuous plane rather than a run of openings.

The bench is a solid oak block on a recessed steel plinth, so it appears to float clear of the floor. We drew it at 420mm — low enough to sit and pull boots off, high enough that a vacuum passes underneath.

Living Room

The sofa is a system, not a suite: fourteen modules in tobacco leather and corduroy that run as one long bank along the glass or break into two facing groups for company. Seat and back are both low, so nothing rises above the sill line and the snow stays visible from every seat.

Overhead view of the tobacco leather modular sofa on a disc-tile rug — Two upholsteries on one frame: smooth leather on the seats, ribbed corduroy on the bolsters.

The rug is the room's one piece of craft. Several thousand hand-coiled felt discs, laid in a drift that thins toward the window instead of stopping at a straight edge, so the floor appears to dissolve rather than be covered.

It was made to a plan drawn for this room's exact dimensions. No standard size of it exists, and there is no seam.

Dining & Kitchen

Kitchen and dining share one room, so the two had to be resolved as a single object rather than a work zone with a table next to it. The island is a black monolith with the sink set flush into stone; the dining table sits on a sculpted pedestal pierced by a circular void, which keeps the floor visible under it and stops a heavy table from filling the room.

Dining table on a sculpted pedestal under two bronze disc pendants, with the black kitchen behind — Two bronze disc pendants hung low over the table — the only reflective surfaces in a room of matte black.

Black kitchen island with flush stone sink in front of full-height glazing — The island runs parallel to the glass so the cook faces the forest, not a wall.

Dining table and leather chairs against the snow view with sheer curtains — Eight chairs in black leather on slim steel frames — weight in the shell, none in the legs.

Appliances are fully integrated behind handleless fronts and the extraction is downdraft, so the wall behind the island stays an unbroken plane. There is no upper cabinetry at all; everything lives in the tall run opposite, where it is out of the sightline from the dining table.

The pendants were the client's reference and we reproduced them exactly — spun brass shades on a slim black stem, hung at 1400mm above finished floor. That height puts the glare below eye level for anyone seated and lets the polished underside throw a warm pool onto the tabletop.

Study

A working room kept deliberately spare. The desk is a single slab of oak carried on one rough-hewn stone block — the only unfinished material in the house, and the reason the room has any weight. The block was chosen from three and cut on site so the slab would sit level without a shim.

Terracotta daybed under an arc floor lamp in the study — Terracotta bouclé daybed, wide enough to sleep on, on castors so it can be pulled to the glass.

A slatted ceiling runs the full depth of the room and absorbs the sound of a video call. Task light comes from a linear fitting recessed into the shelf above the desk, which leaves the arc lamp free to light the daybed instead.

Power and data are routed up through the stone base, so no cable crosses the floor.

Bedroom & Dressing

The bed is a platform: a wide oak plinth with the mattress set inboard, so the frame reads as a low island rather than furniture with legs. Its depth was set so you can sit on the edge and put shoes on — a small decision that fixes the proportion of the whole room.

Primary bedroom with oak platform bed and a lit glass-fronted dressing wall behind — A glass-fronted dressing wall lit from within turns the client's own clothes into the room's only decoration.

Bedroom seen from the side with sheer curtains and the snow forest beyond — Two curtain layers on separate tracks: sheer for daytime privacy, heavy wool for blackout.

Walk-through dressing room in ribbed oak with a window at the end — The dressing room is a passage, not a dead end — it runs through to a window.

Internal lighting in the dressing wall is motion-triggered and warm at 2700K, enough to judge a navy against a black. Rails, drawers and shelf heights were set from an inventory of what the client actually owns rather than a standard module.

There are no bedside tables. Both lamps are wall-mounted on swing arms and the sockets sit inside the plinth, which keeps the floor entirely clear and lets the bed read as a single object from the doorway.

Primary Bath

One black tub against the glass, and nothing else in its half of the room. The far wall carries a relief tile whose pattern only appears under raking light: flat and dark by day, alive at night. It is the most photographed detail in the house and costs almost nothing beyond getting the light position right.

Freestanding black tub against a full-height window with snow-covered pines outside — Tub, stool, towel. Storage lives behind the glass partition so nothing sits on the floor.

Wet room behind a glass screen with relief tile wall, stone bench and oak basin — A single stone bench runs the wall and becomes the vanity — one element instead of three.

Backlit round mirror above a solid oak basin on the relief tile wall — The mirror's backlight is tunable — white for the morning, deep red at night.

The bench is one piece of stone with the basin carved into it, so there is no rim, no silicone joint and nothing to discolour. Waste and supply run inside the wall behind it; the only visible metal in the room is the tap.

Underfloor heating runs to the glass line and the towel rail sits on the same loop, which is what allows a stone bathroom this dark to still feel warm at six in the morning.

Children's Suite

This is where the house lets go. Same dark shell, same detailing, then a saturated palette of yellow, orange and red dropped into it. A climbing wall divides sleeping from play without a door, the floor turns to carpet, and every piece is soft-edged and light enough for a child to move alone.

Children's play area with red carpet, climbing wall, low table and the bed beyond — The climbing wall is a room divider first: it screens the bed from the play area.

Yellow modular seating on orange carpet by the window with a red shelf ladder — The same modular system as the living room, rebuilt at child scale in yellow velvet.

Children's bed on a woven platform with a backlit headboard — Woven rattan platform and headboard, backlit and dimmable down to a night light.

Nothing in this wing has a sharp corner. Every edge is radiused to at least 8mm, the shelf ladder is fixed back to the wall, and the low table is cork-topped so it survives being drawn on and stood on.

All finishes are water-based and low-VOC, specified to the same standard as the rest of the house. The carpet is loose-laid in tiles, so a single ruined square can be swapped rather than the whole floor relaid.

Bathrooms in Colour

Two small rooms carry the whole idea of the house in miniature: dark textured shell, one saturated object. In the children's bath everything that gets touched is orange — tub, vanity, stool, ladder, taps. Colour is used as wayfinding here: if it is orange, a child is allowed to touch it.

Children's bathroom in charcoal with orange vanity, tub, stool and backlit mirror — Charcoal shell, orange fittings, one backlit mirror.

Square orange tub with matching orange ladder against a dark textured wall — Square and low-sided — easier to lift a small child in and out of than an oval.

Powder room with a monolithic orange basin against black penny-tile walls — Powder room: one basin, one tap, one slot of light.

Both rooms use the same black mosaic, laid so the grout lines run continuously around the corners. It is a slow tile to set and the only reason it looks calm rather than busy.

The orange pieces are lacquered to a single code that we hold on file — a replacement basin ordered in five years will still match the ladder.

Why Arcaya

A dark house is where sourcing shows

On a white wall a two-millimetre gap disappears. On a black one it is the first thing you see. This project is the clearest argument we have for drawing and manufacturing under one roof.

One black, not five

Charcoal plaster, smoked oak, blackened steel and black leather come from four trades and almost never agree. We approve them together, on samples, under the light of the room they are going into.

Made to the room

The sofa bank was cut to the glazing line, the rug drawn to this floor, the bed plinth sized so you can sit on its edge. None of it exists in a catalogue, and all of it fitted first time.

Our own factory

Twenty years of manufacturing partners, no showroom markup, no importer in the middle. Cast relief walls, hand-coiled rugs and solid oak joinery at prices that make a whole-home commission realistic.

One point of contact

Plans, samples, manufacturing, inspection, freight, customs, install and styling — one team, one schedule, one invoice. No chasing eleven suppliers across eleven lead times.

Send us a floor plan. We will send back a house.

Every custom piece here went through our own shop drawings, factory and inspection — unpacked, checked against the drawings and photographed before it left the floor. It shipped as one consolidated container to one arrival date, and our crew installed and styled the house room by room. The client arrived to beds made, rugs laid and the last crate gone.

Tell us which rooms you want furnished and we will come back with a plan, a palette and a fixed number.