This Paris apartment has an Eiffel Tower view from its private wine room

Welcome Luxury Home Show. Come on in. Mark Howarth here from Calendar Howarth Interiors. I want to show you this gem of an apartment we designed for our lovely clients from LA in the centre of Paris. Come on in. Our lovely client from LA, they kind of gave us carte blanche. They wanted something very special, they wanted something fun, quite quirky, cosy, memorable. They plan on keeping this place for a long time. I think when we saw it we knew we could make it into something really beautiful and into something that would really fit our family. That really happened. It really happened. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. Mark and his team sourced just really the most incredible lighting for this apartment that really makes it feel like something grand. So the building was actually built in 1910. It's an amazing building right opposite the Eiffel Tower. The whole block is incredible, but this apartment was incredibly tired and very, very dated. And we decided to create some grandeur. The client, our lovely client from LA, they kind of gave us carte blanche. They wanted something very special. They wanted something fun, quite quirky, cozy, memorable. They plan on keeping this place for a long time. So we really played around with it. One of the main things that was a real problem was spatially, it was a mess. There was no proper en-suites. There was nothing for the nanny. There was no way to really live properly how they live. The other major thing was all the architectural detailing. So there was nothing, there was no character, there was none of that Belle Époque grandeur. So every single detail has been rebuilt and remodeled and customized, whether it be the flooring, the ceilings, the corner things, there's a custom ceiling I'll show you in the drawing room later on, which was handmade, it was beautiful. So a lot of the actual base in it was bringing back this character or creating a Belle Époque, a modern version of Belle Époque, which gives us this drama and this sense of fun. That was the foundation of it. And then everything else is layered with color, texture, stone, fabric. We talked with the client about a jewel box. And the idea was that there'll be certain areas of the apartments that are very intense in color. So you go into certain rooms and you get, wow, that's that's a really dark navy or it's a bright pink or it's very textured. So it creates a story within the apartment that's it's exciting. It's a little journey, really. Fortunately, they love it and they're spending a lot of time here now. So we're super happy and hope you like it. The very first time we walked through the door was just how perfectly French it was. It had the classic French layout and French styling. It was, you know, it was shiny in all the right places. But, you know, like a lot of French apartments, it needed a little bit of sassing up. It needed a little bit of color. I think when we saw it, we knew we could make it into something really beautiful and into something that would really fit our family. And that really happened. That really happened. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. So this room is probably our lovely client's favourite space. They love their wine and we created a wine room. The Eiffel Tower is literally out the window. I'm looking at it right now. So with all the custom lighting that we did and these very unusual light fixtures of bespoke fitting we had made, the lighting dims down at night and this very rich jewel-like colour, this green I talked about, makes this room very, very intense and very clubby. So they have their friends around, have a drink, and they've got the custom bar here. And this is a beautiful cream onyx we had custom made with the fluted onyx. So at night time, it's all glows. You've got friends around. You're having a glass of wine and they have some beautiful premium wines. So this room was really important for them when they bought the apartment. It's actually a dining room, but there was none of this detailing, none of this molding, none of this character. So, again, it just creates an energy, creates sense of fun. And part of the journey in this apartment is these little pockets of fun. It makes you smile. So this is definitely, definitely the favourite room. I love this room too, so it's great. The bachelor sofa pieces were custom made by Ben Whistler in Portugal. A lot of the fabrics in here are actually Dedar, which we love. Parisian fabric, can't get any better. This gorgeous fabric here is Dedar. All of these fabrics are Dedar. We have some beautiful Porto Romano wall lights. This is actually a found piece, a very unusual piece. You'll notice as we walk around, a lot of the lighting is really unusual. We chose very specific pieces for the main chandeliers that are very different and very quirky. So each room is grounded by a large piece, which also affects the lighting when it's set. We had a customised Lutron system put in here throughout the apartment, so everything is scene set at night, so it changes the day and the night goes on, creating that luxury energy, but also helping the colour to work. So the colour right now, because it's daylight, is this beautiful fern ball green, but at night time with the lighting it goes very intense. So we played with colour and also with texture. So on the drapery from Dedar, this one from Dedar, the playful patterns of the drapery, the texture of the onyx, that just brings out all this energy and it really makes a sense of fun. And that's really what our clients wanted, you know, this is their place in Paris. They come over here, they've spent quite a lot of time here now actually, but they wanted to be fun, they wanted friends to come round, they wanted to entertain and the brief of this room was, give me a club, give me a little wine bar in my house. I said, great, we can do that. All of our clients are different, and every house is unique, and it's really important. So these clients are very different from the 12 other clients we're working with. And that makes sense. No one's going to have the same interior. So it's my job on Calendar Howarth to really make sure we understand our client. What do they want? What do they really want in their home, and how are we going to make it reflect them? In this project, actually, it's really my personal style. So it was actually a really, really good fun, because I love color, I love texture, I love drama, and it's very much me. Other projects we do are quite minimal. So there's a whole gambit of design out there. But I must admit, we often say with my team and I, which house would you have or apartment would you have of all our clients? It's a bit of a game we play, but I would totally take this one. If there was one on the table from all my clients, I'm having this one, all right? They were great, actually. They gave us a lot of freedom and they were fantastic to work with. They were really behind us on pushing ideas. And they had some comments, of course they did, but they let us roll with it. Some clients ask more questions and more prescriptive, but the bottom line with good design, in my opinion, It has to reflect what the client wants, and it has to be them. When you walk into this apartment, it's so the client that lives here, you know. And that's important for me. It's very bespoke. This room is the main living space in the apartment. As I said to you, the whole area was reconfigured. So walls have been moved to create the bar area, which is the other side of this area. This area is the main living area. and the only actual original feature in the whole apartment we kept was the fireplace, which is actually rather lovely. Everything else is new. In this space, we customised this ceiling with Stevenson's of Norwich, actually a company from the UK. We put back all of the architectural detailing, the mouldings, the corners, the skirtings, the doors, the profiles, even these areas of the curtains. It's all been new, but it's made to look original. The one quirky bit was this ceiling, which I must admit has come out so well. The client loves butterflies, so we had some butterflies, this little one up here, put into the ceiling. And obviously it's lit. The lighting design is very important as well. So at night, when the lights come down, the ceiling gets more lit and it becomes a real feature. But it holds its own. It's not Belle Époque, it's not part of the region. The building isn't Belle Époque, it's 1910. But the ceiling is something we've given to the property that will be there forever. and I hope, who knows, in a hundred years someone will walk in and go, gosh the designer did quite a good job with that, let's hope so, it's quite a way off. But it was just a quirky element for the apartment but it highlights the level of personality and humour that we put into this project for this client. Every single detail is meticulous, everything is sorted out and planned to the minutiae to create an energy and the spaces now work really well. We go from these very jewel-like rooms, rich intensities, to karma rooms, through to massive vintage chandeliers. So you get this play, and at Calendar Howarth we love doing that. We love working with different textures, different energies, different colour. So it's a sense of fun, you know, the interior makes you smile. You know, it's not bland, it's much more maximalist than many other interiors, but it's balanced, so you get this really exciting energy. So this is the main dining space, and dining is really important to this client. They love to cook, they love to entertain, so from the bar room to table. And we wanted to create somewhere that was a real focal point for them and their friends. And we grounded this table with this amazing found piece, this rather large, again it's an oversized chandelier. As I said in the apartment, there's a lot of drama from these oversized light fittings, which really holds the space. The architectural detail again was all redone and it's balanced as it is throughout the apartment. And we worked a lot with, I mean, this custom cabinetry got beautiful Calcutta Viola marble, giving more texture, more balance, more playful. And then we often create these art walls for clients. Rob at Lost Art creates these art pieces that he finds. We styled the art wall with our client because they're very interested in art. Lost Arts and on, they source art from estate sales all over the world and they have a very eclectic amount of art that one can choose from and our clients love it so we we look at the stuff online we sort of find pieces we kind of work with pieces our clients love this one actually this piece here was a real two because it was actually a piece that was painted in Ojai where their foam in California is so they immediately zoned in on that but it really means something for them and they love the piece the other pieces they spent a lot of time with calendar house with us talking about so whilst it looks like it's been plonked on the wall and actually a lot of thought goes into these art walls and it creates drama and it creates fun and the client knows all about it so people are around they can talk about it and have some fun but it also creates a very beautiful vignette that really holds this room. So one of the things in this apartment is the balance of colour, maximalist ideas and also calmness. quite a tricky equation to get right but we worked a lot with colour in various tones and textures so for example in the dining room it's quite much more calm but we've still got our strong colours on upholstery. We have our Calcutta Viola, quite a large slab of it on this custom joinery that gives a real, real intensity and it just makes it playful. Even things like drapery, again it's quite neutral but there's pattern everywhere. This is a beautiful fabric from Dedar that just has texture. The herringbone floor, the different textures, the brass on the handles, all these little details work together to create this energy. So this room is sort of mid-maximalist, it's not as intense as the primary suite, or the bar area, or even the kitchen, or the kids' bedroom, which you'll see. But it just creates a language, and it creates a journey through the apartment, through the space that's very important. On every project, there's always a bit of a nightmare somewhere. Not a bad nightmare, but something needs to be resolved. And this corridor down to the kitchen area is difficult. And there was a really rather unattractive view of an internal courtyard space, which often happens in these beautiful Parisian buildings, these incredible buildings, they look down onto the third world of something down in the courtyard, not nice. And we brainstormed as a team, what can we do, what can we do? Our client loves France. They love Chagall. And we thought, okay, let's play with that. And we have a customised artist that works with us to create custom art. And we decided, right, let's do a stained window, faux stained window with BATLET and let's make it Chagall. but not just copying Chagall. We had long chats with our client and the artist about okay let's make it a customized version of Chagall that has the client and the family in it. So it got quite funny and I do know the client really loves this. It was a problem to be fixed and so we had no idea what we were going to do about it and Mark and his team very cleverly hired a digital artist to create these Chagall inspired films that went over the windows and continued to allow light into the apartment, but made this beautiful piece of art in place of having to look out at the courtyard. And the art is very personal. It's very beautiful. And I notice a new detail every time I walk past it. And it's just, it's stunning. Yeah. And one of our favorite things to share with others when they visit a home. That's right, yeah, that's true. So the kitchen was completely remodeled, completely redesigned, and as you know we spatially redesigned the whole apartment interior architecturally. There used to be a door through here to a bedroom corridor. We closed it all off to give us more space to be able to customize exactly what the client wanted for storage, and they are real chefs, they love to cook. This was a door, we created this area where they can display things but also custom spice racks and things where they can prep. Again going back to our maximalist design idea, there was a real skill in this kitchen to get enough storage but to remain areas that have things on show so you get the personality. It's not minimal, it's not what the client wanted and they can have things on display. We use this vintage mirror in the background to give a bit more depth and it just creates a bit of drama in this corner. Nighttime you've got the custom lighting in the shelving, everything dims down and certain scene sets are set. So when dinner's made and it's prepped, everything goes down lighting control wise. You have the chandelier glowing, you have the lights underneath here and you get this massive drama and it reflects off all the beautiful finishes of all the, the viola is glowing, you've got the chandelier, you've got the shelves. So it's actually a really beautiful space. It's quite a, it's quite a sexy kitchen, quite a luxury kitchen. But again, what the client wanted was a sense of fun, sense of playfulness. And I think through the use of this quite bonkers at Calcutta Viola, which is a beautiful slab, which we looked at many slabs to get this right, and the actual design on the floor with the Verde inserts to get that right. It's all very balanced and very curated with the brass inserts in the marble, custom brass inserts in the cabinetry with the brass handles. The sense of color, the power, the playfulness, the choice of materials, the bold decisions. You know, some very bold design decisions were agreed and made in this process. It's a very beautiful space, but it's intended to be lived in. It's intended for a family to make memories here. It's intended for two people to be in love here. It's intended for friends to enjoy the space and just really to be fully, thoroughly lived in. And I think that's one thing that we sort of pride ourselves on as humans is that we're trying to squeeze every ounce out of life. And this apartment really squeezed every ounce out of what it had to give. We love Paris. We came to Paris because we think it's the most elegant city in the world. And we wanted our place to sort of reflect and honor that. It's cozy and it's elegant, and it's really just a work of art. Primary suite, very, very important space in anyone's home. Navy is actually a great color for a bedroom. It's very restful, very sleep-orientated, so it's a very lovely thing to do. We have our oversized chandeliers again. This one's actually from Vaughan. And our custom ceiling rows that we had made specifically for this room. All of the corner things, again, the moldings were custom-made, as is all the paneling. This is all reintroduced by us as a design to give the apartment some character back. And then focusing just on tone-on-tone changes with the navy just gives it a real drama. It just makes it a very rich space. Painting out the ceilings like we did in the other areas with rich colour is always a bit, do I do it, do I paint the ceiling, do I not paint the ceiling? In my opinion, it works very, very well because it just really encases this room and makes it incredibly cosy at night. And again, the light settings go down. So you can imagine this real intensity and then it leads on into the bathroom with this crazy Patagonia marble, which I'll show you. Every single area of this apartment is designed to have a surprise. And we sourced this Patagonia marble, which we looked at so many slabs, but found this incredible slab with huge patination, huge textures, huge tonal changes, with this brass custom inlay joinery, just really creates a showstopper. It goes with the theme, the floor is Maximus. We have some peach marble with the Patagonia to have this checkerboard floor. So the whole thing has a bit of fun, a bit of playfulness. The actual shower is a custom steam shower as well. So in here you have all the beautiful marble, completely templated, cut, curated, designed to specifically balance. So in here there's a steam shower as well, so it's a steam shower and a normal shower. Just creating, you know, a perfectly formed space for a primary suite. There's loads of storage, it's all custom, it's stuffed up, opens automatically. This Patagonia marble, some people are gonna go, God, I'm not sure about that. But it was the right design decision. We looked at many other options for, As we always do in design, in concept design, we show our clients many ideas to create this personality, this fun, and we whittle them down. But I must admit, this client were great. They said, you know what, no, this is the most bonkers one we showed them, and it was a punchy design decision, but my goodness, it really worked. The most special piece in the apartment to me is probably not just one piece, but it's every light fixture was chosen for the space. Some of them are vintage, some of them were custom, And some of them were just finds on, you know, first imps. But Mark and his team sourced just really the most incredible lighting for this apartment that really makes it feel like something grand. The whole interior architecture, as I said, changed for the apartment. So we created like a guest suite and an area of this area of the apartment that wasn't here before. So when you come down this area, it's a lot more private. So where the kids sleep at the end, so it's a bit more quiet. And we had our custom powder room, we have a guest suite, We have the main kids' bathroom and the kids' area at the end, and with a customised laundry area that's hidden tidily behind here. So the powder room is true to purpose for what we've been talking about. It is maximalist, it's got an intensity of colour, it's powerful. It's grounded by this beautiful de Gournay wallpaper, customised for the space. We found these 1930s light fittings that just give a bit of that Parisian glamour. And again, another stone, this is a pink onyx, customised pink onyx on the floor with the customised basin. So the whole thing is colourful, playful, a bit quirky, but it makes you smile. You know, the choice of the pink onyx, bold decision. You know, juxtaposing with this beautiful gold paper from Degornay and these light fittings just adds to the language for the project of playfulness, fun and a sense of colour. One of the main guest bedrooms, colour, playful, tone on tone. This room was really quite French. You know, originally we were going to fabric the walls like the French do, but we decided not to go with this sewn wallpaper with the matching drapes and then the coordinating fabrics. So it's a play with these warm gold tones, really to make it cosy. You know, it's nice when you're going to stay somewhere in the guest room. It feels very cosy. We had some really fun product from Porto Romana with this really playful light. Again, with the rest of the apartment, everything's quite playful. There's a feature light, but yeah, this one was relatively straightforward in the sense of texture, tone, pattern, fun, energy, and it just creates this really cozy space for their guests. So at the end of this corridor, this new wing that we created with all the bedrooms, the guest areas and the kids area, which is only the kids bedroom at the end, is further away from the bar area and the dining area, so if the client's entertaining, the kids can sleep. And we decided with our client, they didn't want a kiddie room. There's nothing wrong with that. Nothing with elephants and Barbies and all that sort of stuff. But we decided, let's go for something a bit more sophisticated, a bit more fun, something that will last. And we ended up with this rather fabulous paper. Again, it's very playful. It's got personality. We've used, as we have in a lot of the apartment, this very rich navy that grounds the paper. We papered the ceiling as well. So it gives it real texture, real coziness. And we have another Porta Romana light, actually, with a little bird in it, which the kids loved. So that was theirs. And then we created them both their little areas with all the electric curtains that go backwards and forwards. That was a fun. And all their areas for their toys. So they've got their own little areas, which is really, really cute. Our clients work with us and they obviously have ideas. They said, well, you know what? Not sure, but they loved this one. Absolutely loved this one. Again, it was a punchy design decision. The kids love this room, so happy days. Kids bathroom, very important space. Again, all of the apartment was spatially realigned. We moved walls, changed things. In this specific area, in France, in any country actually, nightmare with pipe runs and drainage and levels. Fortunately, we have a fantastic builder we use in Paris. He does all of our projects for us in Paris, exceptional. Simple bathroom, again, use of very little stone, practical for the kids. We've got a navy back again, perfectly formed. We've got a bench in the shower, and we actually managed to get a really decent-sized shower in here from realigning the pipe work. More boring side of things, but very important to get the infrastructure right. Everything has the warm-up underfloor heating. It's top of the line. All the infrastructure for heating, the AC is integrated. All these things, especially for our American clients, very, very important. Really good AC, really good systems, really good water pressure. Those practical elements are vital. It doesn't matter how good it looks. If the shower's not powerful, if it's not warm enough, or the AC doesn't work, it's game over. So all of those are considered and made to work, and this is a major renovation back to Bricks. So we had a very good contractor on our team work with us to create the best HVA systems you can get, which is important. He and his team stepped foot in the apartment that that was their goal. And I showed them all of my pictures, my inspiration board on Pinterest, and they said, yes, we know exactly what you're looking for. And a few weeks later, we had, they had a mock-up for us of each of the rooms. And I think both of us went, guys, almost no notes. It was that close to the vision that we had, and even beyond. I feel like I know now what I didn't know before and that's to go all in and we really did. You know, there were no half measures here, so we just went all in. We really did. Thanks so much for coming around today. I really enjoyed showing you the apartment. It's been a really fun day for me as well because I've been revisiting what we did, working with our lovely client here. So thanks for coming, I hope you enjoyed it. If you like what you see and you want to hear more about Callander Howarth interior design, check below. Thanks so much, have a great day. Is this chateau one of France's most beautiful homes? We flew from the UK to find out. I took a flight from London to arrive in Bordeaux, a region in France best known for its wine. A bit of local culture I can definitely get behind. Once I'd landed in France, there was still some distance to our destination.