Interior Design — La Zagaleta Family Villa

The owners — a couple in their forties with two school-age children and a Geneva-based career — bought the villa already built and wanted the entire interior delivered turnkey in time for a September relocation. Their brief was unusually specific: refined contemporary but never sterile, the warmth of a country house in Provence translated to a Costa-del-Sol scale, large enough to host 18 for dinner without feeling cavernous when it's just four for breakfast. They asked us to lean masculine in palette, layer texture aggressively, and use art at architectural scale — single oversized canvases, never gallery-walls.

Technical Specifications

Before: the builder's standard developer-spec interior — pale beige porcelain floor, off-the-shelf kitchen, painted plaster, generic chrome bathroom fittings. The architecture was good, the finishes were anonymous. During: the same great-room mid-project after we replaced floors with American walnut and the entry-hall floor with honey travertine, re-skinned the kitchen and bar in walnut joinery and Calacatta Viola, and re-finished the walls in pale-greige limewash — the architectural canvas now consistent with the brief, ready for soft goods. The before-during-after sequence on this page shows clearly what 14 weeks of interior work added to a builder-spec shell.

Technical Specifications

Walls are finished in warm pale-greige limewash, hand-trowelled in three coats, a notch greyer than cream — calibrated to read as a continuous warm shadow against the walnut floor. A slim blackened-steel-framed glass partition divides the great-room from the bar nook, structurally non-loadbearing but architecturally decisive: it gives the open plan a sense of place without breaking the volume. The dining wall carries a single oversized abstract canvas in charcoal, deep ochre and warm bronze, slim blackened-steel frame, brushed-bronze picture light grazing it from above. No gallery walls, no gallery shelves — every artwork carries its own scale.

Technical Specifications

The master suite carries a walk-in dressing room in dark American walnut, floor-to-ceiling on three walls, with smoked-bronze handle channels and integrated warm-white LED in every shelf-edge. Inside: hanging space for both partners, push-to-open drawer banks for folded items, glass-fronted shelving for accessories, and a central island with a Calacatta Viola top carrying a leather-lined valet tray and a single hand-thrown ceramic vessel. Secondary bedrooms each carry a 3-bay built-in in matching walnut. Built in our Mijas joinery workshop, hand-finished before delivery.

Technical Specifications

The master bed is a low-profile platform in dark American walnut with an oversized bouclé-and-leather headboard, dressed in layered washed linen, ivory cashmere and a single deep-charcoal velvet runner across the foot. Pillows graduate from cream linen to oat cashmere to charcoal-velvet shams; three small accent cushions add a thread of warm bronze. Bedside tables in matching walnut carry an alabaster-and-brushed-bronze sculptural table lamp, a smoked-glass carafe with a glass on top, a leather-bound book turned face up, and a single hand-thrown deep-charcoal ceramic. The room is calm, masculine-leaning and quiet.

Technical Specifications

The dining table is a 3.2 m American-walnut refectory on slim brushed-bronze legs, set for ten even when no one is eating: oat-linen runner, hand-thrown stoneware plates with a charcoal glaze rim, brushed-bronze cutlery from a Toledo forge, smoke-tint hand-blown drinking glasses, two pairs of beeswax taper candles in low bronze holders, and a flat Calacatta-Viola centerpiece holding fresh olive branches. Ten dining chairs pair charcoal-velvet upholstery with brushed-bronze legs. Above the table, a sculptural alabaster-and-bronze pendant cluster on a dimmer scene.

Technical Specifications

Lighting is layered on four planes — recessed downlights on dimmer scenes (general), alabaster-and-bronze table lamps at every seating position (warmth), brushed-bronze picture lights above each canvas (accent), and layered candlelight at sundown (atmosphere). Decor follows the same restraint that defines every Magnum project: large hand-thrown vessels in cream, oat and a single deep-charcoal accent, oversized cloth-bound art books with cream and chocolate spines, no clutter and no objects without purpose. The texture story is the loudest in this project: charcoal velvet on bouclé on cashmere on washed linen, walnut on travertine on Calacatta Viola, bronze on greige limewash — every seating zone layers at least four textures.

Technical Specifications

An interior-design commission with Magnum Reformas starts with a free 90-minute consultation at your property or our Marbella showroom. Within 10 working days you receive a concept pack with three mood directions, an indicative palette and a fixed-fee quote covering full design + procurement + on-site styling. For full-time family residences like this one we add a lifestyle-pattern interview — how each room is actually used, where the children read, where the family eats on a Tuesday — so the design fits the way you live, not the way the photoshoot looks. Deliverables: plans, lighting, joinery drawings, FF&E spec, installation calendar. On handover, the home is fully styled and ready to live in.

Technical Specifications