You might assume that a 200-square-foot apartment would be the home of a student on a budget or maybe a short-term rental for travelers. This apartment, however, belongs to a successful businesswoman who lives outside of Paris and was in need of a small pied-à-terre in the capital. Pauline Lorenzi-Boisrond was commissioned to renovate the studio on the rue du Cherche-Midi. “She comes to Paris regularly for work but she had grown tired of impersonal hotel rooms where she can't leave her things from one visit to the next,” Pauline, the interior designer and founder of Studio Ett Hem, explains. “She wanted her own little suite in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés area.” Ett hem means “house” in Swedish. It is indeed a fitting name for a designer tasked with overcoming the limitations of the space to bring out its homey charms.
Following the goal of creating the feel of a hotel suite, Studio Ett Hem created a small, multi-functional entrance hallway that also solves the constraint created by the slanted load-bearing wall. The wall, which runs along one side of the space, includes a series of closet doors—some are decorative, others functional. One set, however, leads into the apartment’s bathroom. On the right, an elegant but discreet kitchen sits to one side of the sleeping area, separated by a wood-and-glass partition.
The efficient kitchen includes a refrigerator, a two-burner cooktop, a small sink, a hidden microwave, and storage. “In small spaces, we are often afraid to create zones, but differentiating functions and installing circulation counter-intuitively expands the space,” Pauline says. The wood-and-glass divider defines the dual entrance-kitchen area and separates it from the quieter part of the room, but its rounded shapes also soften this border. Since spaces in small apartments must often fulfill multiple functions, this dining area is placed under a window where the natural light is also handy when it plays its other role, as an office.
While parts of the building were in poor condition, Studio Ett Hem was determined to preserve and reuse as much of the existing unit as possible. The period floor tiles are preserved in the sleeping area as is a small black fireplace that gives the apartment an added dose of personality. Its stone also inspired the Saint Laurent marble on the kitchen countertop, the small tabletop, and the bedside niches. “This elegant deep black with gold veins is one of the colors we discovered in this apartment along with the dark red of the floor tiles. We used it in the fabric of the banquettes in the dining area, which brings together all the colors of the apartment.” The fabric’s palette includes black (for the marble), bronze for the heating grills, and pink for the niches of the headboard and the piping of the cushions—a pink that also recalls the tiles.
The apartment’s array of colors also includes two light blues, as see in the entrance-kitchen area. “Neither too deep nor too strong, from the floor to the ceiling,” Pauline says. “It provides a more luminous feel to this area, which feels like a small box.” Wood, represented in the structural beams and the floors, is simply stripped and varnished or presented in the old-fashioned form of herringbone parquet and moldings that elegantly revisit the Haussmann era. They complete the character of this small studio-suite. “Wood is omnipresent in the structure of the building, so it was necessary to give its character to the whole. At the same time, we choose to hide the storage in plain sight,” Pauline says. Or, at least, hide it behind discreet doors. “Everything you don't need to see but need to have” is here, she explains. The hot water tank, washing machine, heating system, and even the bathroom sit behind molded woodwork and elegant doors that are a mix of refined style and simple charm.
