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Houzz Tour: Simple Luxury at a Swedish Retreat
A Danish design team remodels an abandoned farmhouse for a Swedish family's summer home
For some, luxury means opulence — rich carpeting, chandeliers dripping with crystal, and silk pillows. For others, luxury is about simplicity — having less sometimes means you get to enjoy it more. This home in Österlen, Sweden, is a perfect example of the latter. The home was once an abandoned farmhouse, which the clients found in a terrible state. But the location in the Swedish summer beach town couldn't have been better, so the family recruited Jonas Labbé and Johannes Schotanus of LASC Studio in Copenhagen to remodel the space.
The clients, a couple from Stockholm with two children, were working with a limited budget, so Labbé and Schotanus decided to stick with a simple material palette, re-inventing the farmhouse by opening up the space and blending traditional and contemporary elements. The result is clean, minimalistic, and simply luxurious.
Here it is before the family moved in with their furniture, allowing you to focus on the home's architecture itself.
The clients, a couple from Stockholm with two children, were working with a limited budget, so Labbé and Schotanus decided to stick with a simple material palette, re-inventing the farmhouse by opening up the space and blending traditional and contemporary elements. The result is clean, minimalistic, and simply luxurious.
Here it is before the family moved in with their furniture, allowing you to focus on the home's architecture itself.
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by LASC Studio
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| The homes in this area are usually built in a robust style, with a central courtyard to protect residents from the open and windy environment. While the clients were aware of what a traditional Österlen house looked like, they wanted something that would allow them to enjoy the outdoors. |
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by LASC Studio
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| Labbé and Schotanus decided to keep the original windows and floors, but they removed almost 2/3 of the walls inside the home to open up the space and give it a more lofty feel. They also installed more large window openings with window frames that dissolve into the plaster, making the glimpses of the outdoors seamless with the rest of the house. The team at LASC also decided to add a renovated 1960s Danish stove. The beautiful piece adds a rustic and authentic touch. |
by LASC Studio
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The team decided to keep the material palette very minimal. Very little was used outside of pine planks, concrete, and white plaster. "We interpreted this as a challenge to rethink and play on the notion of shelter," Labbé says.
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by LASC Studio
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| Although bright pops of bold blue and orange are scattered throughout the house, the colors are generally simple and bare to echo the landscape outside. While the more pale palette connects with the outdoors, the blue and orange accents throughout the home were designed as elements of comfort and nostalgia — they remind the clients of the time they spent living in China and of the summer days they spent at a nearby beach. |
by LASC Studio
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The blue and orange are used mainly in transitional spaces, and seem to peek out and then disappear again as you walk through the house.
by LASC Studio
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From the very beginning, they decided to infuse the 1,130-square-foot house with a look they described as "immaterial luxury." Simple pine planks line the walls and floors leading up the bold blue staircase.
"This is a very unpretentious house," says Labbé. "It brings the focus of luxury back to being about experience and simplicity."
"This is a very unpretentious house," says Labbé. "It brings the focus of luxury back to being about experience and simplicity."
by LASC Studio
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Upstairs, a hidden door lends a playful and surprising element to a light-filled bedroom nook. The pine door blends right in with the paneled wall, revealing a burst of neon orange when opened. "We enjoy working in this way — finding solutions and expressions that seem both familiar and surprising," Schotanus says.
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When the door to the bedroom is left open, the main living area downstairs is visible — making the home feel very much like a loft. The main goal for the team was to open the house up as much as possible. While part of that process was removing some pieces of the structure, it also involved re-inventing the existing house by opening up doors and windows in the original walls.
by LASC Studio
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True to modern style in Sweden, product and decor is kept very simple and sparse. But the space is warmed up by natural sunlight pouring onto cozy and rustic pine paneling.
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by LASC Studio
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| One of the clients and LASC's favorite parts about this project was the old washing house connected to the main house. Both structures were designed in the same style — a traditional exterior structure that has playful and modern ideas mixed into its design. |
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The team wanted to make sure that the beauty of the Österlen countryside would be as present in the bath house as it is in the main house. The shower floor was made out of wood so that when the shower is turned on the sound of water falling on wood recalls the natural world outside.
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The tub was placed towards the other end of the bath house, in front of a sunlit window. The bench underneath the window is heated concrete. The simple design puts an emphasis on the view and creates a more blurred transition between the indoors and the outdoors.
More Houzz Tours:
Hey, Where's the Furniture?
Mobile, Modern Farmhouse
Scandinavian Style with a Twist
DIY Glitz and Glamour in Sweden
More Houzz Tours:
Hey, Where's the Furniture?
Mobile, Modern Farmhouse
Scandinavian Style with a Twist
DIY Glitz and Glamour in Sweden
Ideabook updated on Dec. 15, 2011.
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