ARCAYA CUSTOMER DESIGN CASE

Soft, Elegant, a Little Cinematic

A 3,875 sq ft private villa, furnished end to end by Arcaya: period millwork we drew, furniture we made, one container, one install.

French vintage living room with plaster ceiling medallion, black millwork and oxblood walls

The Brief

Romantic, not costumed

French vintage fails in one of two ways: it becomes a museum, or it becomes a stage set. The client asked for the cinematic version — soft, elegant, quietly theatrical — in a villa their family actually lives in. We treated the shell as period architecture and the furniture as the present day.

Arcaya took the whole interior: we drew the panel moulding, the ceiling medallions, the arched cabinetry and every built-in, set the colour scheme wall by wall, then designed and manufactured the furniture that sits inside it. Period detail is millimetre work. A cornice one size too heavy and the room stops being romantic and starts wearing a costume.

Three colours carry all eight rooms — oxblood, olive and off-white — over dark oak laid in herringbone. Because the drawings and the factory are both ours, the olive on the bedhead is the olive on the kitchen doors and the olive on the dining chairs. That is not luck; it is one paint standard, approved under this house's own light.

01 — Living Room

Dark walls, and the light still wins

The end wall is nearly black and the flanking walls oxblood, yet the room stays bright: the ceiling, cornice and window wall are left off-white and the glazing runs full height. We put the bar on the long wall in arched, backlit reeded glass so the dark mass reads as furniture rather than as a corridor.

Living room with plaster bust on a fluted plinth, pleated floor lamp and black arched cabinetry — Herringbone oak, carved sideboard, bust on a fluted plinth — the vintage register set by objects, not by ornament.

Arcaya Detail The ceiling medallion is centred on the chandelier over the seating, not on the room's geometry — so the light hangs true where people sit.

Arcaya Detail Bar doors are arched fluted glass with brass knobs and interior lighting, so a long dark run glows instead of closing the wall.

Arcaya Detail One plain modern piece per room — here a leather sofa — which is what keeps the period detail from tipping into pastiche.

02 — Dining Room

Panelling as the only decoration

Nothing hangs on this wall. We drew three panel bays with cast corner rosettes and let the moulding do the work, then hung three stained-glass pendants low enough to make the table the brightest thing in the room. The table itself is ours: a black top on travertine columns with oxblood caps, an obviously new object among old details.

Dining room with panelled wall, green stained-glass pendants and olive velvet chairs — Custom table on travertine columns; olive velvet chairs; three pendants set to the table's length, not the room's.

Arcaya Detail Panel bays are spaced from the table centre outward, so the middle bay lands exactly behind the table and the room reads symmetrical.

Arcaya Detail Chair seats and pendant glass share one olive; the travertine column matches the cornice white, tying new furniture to old plaster.

03 — Breakfast Room

Four chairs, four different colours

The family eats here far more often than in the dining room, so we kept it loose: a round pedestal table, four chairs in four upholstery colours, and a steel-framed internal window that borrows the kitchen's daylight and its floral tile.

Breakfast room with round black table, mismatched chairs and steel internal window to the kitchen — Internal steel window, fluted plaster column, view through to the living room.

Breakfast room looking toward the stair and oxblood panelled wall — The oxblood panel wraps the stair wall and stops the room from feeling like a hallway.

Arcaya Detail Mismatched seats are drawn from one four-colour family — ochre, rose, oxblood, olive — so "collected over time" still looks deliberate.

Arcaya Detail The internal window sits at counter height on the kitchen side, so it lends light without putting the cooktop on display.

04 — Kitchen

Where the romance is allowed to be literal

One room takes the floral wallpaper and the graphic cement tile. Olive uppers, near-black bases, arched door panels and aged brass knobs: the most decorative surfaces in the house, in the room where they will be looked at from three feet away.

Galley kitchen with olive arched upper cabinets, floral wallpaper and patterned cement floor — Olive uppers over near-black bases; floral paper carried onto the backsplash; petal-pattern cement floor.

Arcaya Detail Upper doors are arched but flat-fronted, so a period profile still wipes clean — the drawing was revised twice for that reason.

Arcaya Detail Wallpaper runs behind glass at the backsplash rather than stopping at the counter, which is what makes a working kitchen read as a room.

05 — Stair Hall

The house's one grand gesture

Everything else in the villa is restrained, so the hall is allowed to perform: an oval coved ceiling, a glass-leaf chandelier hung down the stairwell, turned dark-oak newels and balusters, and a single piece of modern colour on the return wall.

Stair hall with oval coved ceiling, glass-leaf chandelier and turned dark oak balustrade — Oval cove with concealed lighting; turned newels in the same stain as the interior doors.

Arcaya Detail Chandelier drop was set on site, not on paper — hung to be seen from the landing above and from the entry below.

Arcaya Detail Treads are pale stone against dark newels, so the flight stays legible at night with only the cove lit.

06 — Primary Bedroom

Oxblood, olive, and one arch

The bed wall is oxblood with a moulded panel behind the headboard; the curtains are olive; the four-poster is ours, black frame with olive velvet. We cut the opening to the bath as a plain arch — no architrave, no trim — because the room already has enough profile in it.

Primary bedroom with oxblood panelled wall, olive velvet bed and arched opening to the bath — Custom four-poster in olive velvet; houndstooth throw; medallion centred on the bed, not the ceiling.

Arcaya Detail The wall panel is drawn 60mm wider than the headboard on each side, so the bed sits inside the moulding instead of fighting it.

Arcaya Detail Curtains hang from ceiling to floor in a single olive, hiding the head detail and buying the room 200mm of apparent height.

07 — Guest Bedroom

Wainscot below, botanical above

Warmer and quieter than the primary: walnut wainscot to chair height, a soft botanical mural above it, and a full wall of arched wardrobes in the same walnut so the storage disappears into the panelling.

Guest bedroom with walnut wainscot, botanical mural and arched wardrobe wall — Arched wardrobe wall in walnut; mural pitched pale so the room stays restful.

Arcaya Detail Wainscot height is set to the bed's mattress line, so the panel rail runs level with the bedding across the whole wall.

Arcaya Detail Wardrobe arches repeat the bath opening in the primary suite — one radius used throughout the house.

08 — Dressing Room

Two walls of doors, one window

A narrow room, so we gave it symmetry instead of width: full-height arched doors on both sides, a vanity built into the window bay, and the only soft object in the room on a single stool.

Dressing room with full-height arched dark cabinetry and a vanity in the window bay — Arched doors to the ceiling line; vanity top in walnut with four shallow drawers.

Arcaya Detail Doors run to the ceiling line with no filler panel, which is the single move that makes a small dressing room feel tall.

Arcaya Detail Open shelf returns flank the window so bags stay visible while everything else is behind a door.

Arcaya Detail Vanity is set at the sill so the mirror gets daylight rather than a downlight — the reason the bay was kept clear.

Palette & Materials

Three colours, held across eight rooms

The list was fixed before the first piece was drawn. It is why the house photographs as one story, and why a piece we build for it in three years will still belong.

How It Was Delivered

Period detail needs one team, not eleven

Mouldings, cabinetry and furniture in a house like this all have to agree. Ours were drawn together, made in the same network, inspected together and installed together.

The family walked into a finished villa: curtains hung, rugs down, the last crate gone. Eight rooms that look collected over decades, delivered on one date.