Pastels in Prilly

A completely renovated house that draws its inspiration from its 1900s origins. On the one hand, it displays fine restoration work – parquet floors, period furniture, custom-made storage – and on the other, major work with a new insulated roof, along with the windows all being replaced.

The house has a Belle Époque spirit: a mansion with almost Mediterranean pastels, displaying details that seem to be from a past century, but nevertheless offer a modern touch. It’s the perfect blend, encapsulated by the contrast between an Eames rocking chair and an old restored theatre chair, between a Bernard Schottlander wall light and a rattan chandelier by Ilse Crawford. The type of house where you can live well.

Three stories high, it is a micro-building giving the appearance of having been stretched upwards, but at the same time remaining compact. With its powder pink facade – resembling the trademark Ladurée – and shutters tending towards olive green rather than the traditional Vaud colour, some might see it as a pastry house like that of Jeannot and Margot, better known as Hansel and Gretel. It is true that it has all the makings of that famous fairy tale with a happy ending, with its dining room puffing out its chest over the garden and its mini balcony with dazzling charm. A very relaxing setting. Symbiotic, the colours chosen offer a perfect chromatic reflection of the luxuriant garden that surrounds this residence, striking a perfect harmony from a mineral as well as a plant point of view.

Living well, together

The ground floor is a welcoming space where a traditional, but nevertheless contemporary, white earthenware stove sits pride of place, perfectly neutral. The kitchen rests on a ceramic floor with a custom design and multiple shades of blue, a colour that noticeably softens the ambiance and readily suggests the water surrounding the Aegean Islands. Giving us all the feel-good factor. The dining room has the dimensions of a chocolate box, a large horizontal window created ex nihilo echoing the monumental buffet facing it on the opposite wall. Or how to feel alive, in the present, in a space that breathes of the past.

Home of a couple with artistic inclinations, half musical, half literary, it offers two common floors, yet individualised. The earthenware floor tiles are a subtle territorial reminder, the blue tones for the lady, the red enamelled terracotta for the gentleman, even though there is no mention here of The War of the Roses. On the contrary, given the time spent in the garden.

A subtle blend of the functional (the second floor's spare kitchen) and the cultural (the basin serving as a sink), the most contemporary and the least trivial, this architectural pastry shop is now adorned with a roof with photovoltaic tiles and new insulation. A guarantee that the colours, powdered here, pastel there, never fade.