SAV - Sa Aranha & Vasconcelos

Exaggerated scale reads as modern. Restrained scale reads as classic. The best rooms don’t choose between them.

A baroque cardinal, a hexagonal mirror, a lamp the colour of the robe. None of it should agree, and yet nothing clashes. Every piece was given the same thing: a wall of its own and nothing competing for it.

A sketch swims across the ceiling as if the room had been drawn before it was built, the line continuing down onto the pantry doors. Underneath, the table is already set in green for lunch.

Light is decided before anything else, whether it’s the window at nine in the morning or the colour chosen for a w**e wall. Everything in a room answers to it.

Shade covers the table end to end, deep enough to reach the two urns at the wall. Past the deck's edge, the pines and the pool step straight into full sun.

A pierced wall breaks the afternoon light into small squares before it reaches the sofa. Terracotta and olive sit against the cream, the only colour in a room built from restraint.

Botânica is named for the gardens around it, in the heart of Vilamoura. The rooms hold a soft, warm palette, terracotta and olive break the neutrals on a headboard, and the light takes its time getting in.