Spaces · Kadıköy, Istanbul
Villa Interior Design
Turnkey Design & Construction
Villa interior design resolves the plan, the material language, the lighting and the technical services of a house that spreads over several floors, a garden and a terrace — as one whole, design and construction together. What separates a villa from a flat is not size alone: within a single house, areas that work quite differently (day, night, service, outdoors) must all speak the same language.
Our Kadıköy-based studio has run design and construction from one hand since 2015. The 94+ projects we have completed include the Riva Düşler Vadisi Villa in Beykoz. Below is the order in which the decisions in a villa project are actually made.
The real risk in a villa: rooms drifting apart
At villa scale the usual problem is not a badly designed room but rooms that are each right in themselves and do not talk to one another. The cause is decisions taken room by room over months: supply changes meanwhile, tones drift, and the house reads as parts added to each other rather than one building. The remedy is a small number of decisions taken with all the plans in front of us, then repeated everywhere.
- The material palette is held to four surfaces: one floor, one timber tone, one stone, one family of wall colours.
- Door height, frames, skirtings, handles and the socket range stay the same on every floor; three different socket plates go unnoticed one by one, but leave a sense of untidiness.
- The colour temperature of the light is constant throughout the house; warm light in one room and neutral in the next is the break spotted quickest.
- The floor runs as one material within a storey; where two materials must meet, the junction is detailed flush in the same plane rather than with a transition strip.
The plan for multi-storey living, and the staircase
In a villa the plan follows how the day is spent, not a list of rooms. The common arrangement divides the floors by function: the entrance floor for the day (living, dining, kitchen, cloakroom), the floor above for the night (bedrooms and bathrooms), the lower floor for service areas. It must also allow for later: a study on the entrance floor with a shower room beside it, able to become a bedroom in time, keeps the house usable years on.
The staircase stands at the centre of that arrangement; not a way of getting between floors but the largest piece of furniture in the house, and its position sets the length of the corridor above. Step dimensions must be identical on every flight — a single riser of a different height is the best-known cause of a stumble. A slip-resistant tread, a continuous handrail and, where there are small children, narrow gaps in the balustrade are settled at plan stage; we check the dimensions against the regulations in force.
Inside to outside: terrace, garden and poolside
The clearest thing separating a villa from a flat is that the interior carries on outdoors. What is usually wanted is the internal floor and the terrace meeting at one level; doing that without letting water in depends on a channel drain with a grating in front of the glazing, a fall taking the terrace away from the building, and a correctly lapped waterproofing layer beneath the frame. Without those three, nothing is left but to raise the threshold.
- Freeze and thaw: water absorbed by a porous stone freezes and cracks the surface; a stone that gives no trouble indoors can spall outside after a few winters. Outdoors, materials with a low water absorption rate are chosen.
- Slip resistance: at the poolside, at a shower exit and on external steps the surface must grip while wet; honed, brushed or sandblasted finishes are used rather than polished.
- UV and pool water: external timber greys in the sun, and chlorine and salt stain and wear natural stone; if the colour is to be kept, the maintenance schedule is discussed at the outset.
- Services: external lighting, socket and irrigation runs go in before the landscaping; adding them later means opening the ground again.
Continuous veining in stone and timber
In a villa the surfaces are large. When a living-room wall running for metres, or an island worktop, is clad in stone, the real question is not the material but how one slab carries on into the next. For continuous veining the slabs must come from the same block and be cut in sequence, which means selecting from the block itself and counting the slabs, wastage included, from the start. Before installation we lay them out on the floor to see where the joints will fall.
Behaviour matters as much as appearance: marble is sensitive to acidic liquids (lemon, vinegar, wine) and takes a dull etch mark; travertine's pores may be filled or left open; granite and porcelain ask for less care. We made the comparison in travertine or marble. With timber the deciding factors are moisture and heat: because solid boards expand and contract over underfloor heating, engineered (multi-layer) boards are generally used, within the surface temperature limit given by the manufacturer.
Lighting in high-ceilinged rooms
In a villa there is hardly a room a single ceiling fitting can resolve; light is built in layers: general lighting, task light, accent light and the decorative fitting. High-ceilinged living rooms add distance to that — a fitting that lights the floor comfortably at 2.7 metres leaves very little on it at five. So part of the light comes from below and from the side: wall lights, floor lamps, indirect light reflected off a cornice.
Because the same room wants different levels for dinner, for guests and for a film, dimmable circuits and grouped switching are planned from the start; on stairs and in corridors a low-level guide light at night is both comfort and safety. We set the layers out in lighting layers.
Technical services and the smart home
In a villa many decisions must be taken before the walls close. With underfloor heating the conductivity of the floor finish comes into play: thick natural stone is slow to warm but holds heat long, timber does the opposite, large rugs cover the heated surface. Splitting the floors into zones makes a real difference where part of the house is unused. In cooling, the choice of indoor unit or ducted system sets the grille positions and so the suspended ceiling detail; with hot water, the longer the run the longer the wait at the tap, so recirculation is discussed on long lines.
A smart home system is not a product bought afterwards but a cabling decision. We keep its scope to what will genuinely be used; lighting scenes, curtains and blinds, climate control and security are enough in most houses. Whatever the system, a manual control is left in every room: if it fails, the lights still have to come on.
Storage and service areas
As a villa grows so do its contents, but storage does not appear by itself; left out of the plan, the garage and the plant room become a store. What we set space aside for from the start is usually this: a pantry beside the kitchen, a separate room for laundry, drying and ironing, storage for seasonal items, and an enclosed space for garden tools and outdoor cushions. The service route matters too: a direct link from the garage or garden gate to the kitchen keeps the shopping from being carried through the house.
Programme, site supervision and permits
Building out a villa takes longer than a flat of the same area: there are more items to be manufactured, outdoor work depends on the weather, and choosing and supplying the block of natural stone runs to its own schedule. With several teams on site at once, sequence becomes critical — no plastering before the services are closed, no decoration before the plastering is done, no tiling in a wet area before the waterproofing is tested.
Where the work touches the load-bearing structure, the appearance of the façade or the area of the unit itself, an architectural project and a formal permit process come into it. If the villa sits in a gated development, the management plan and site rules become decisive: working hours, the days noisy work is allowed, rubble removal and the deposit most developments ask for. We confirm all of it in writing before starting.
The budget is set far less by floor area than by these: the number of wet areas, the proportion of natural stone and how readily it can be sourced, the ratio of bespoke joinery to off-the-shelf products, whether the mechanical and electrical services are being renewed, the extent of the outdoor work, and whether demolition is needed in the existing building.
From our real projects
Riva Düşler Vadisi Villa (Beykoz, Istanbul) is the villa project we have completed; photographs and project details are on its own page.
Our work at apartment scale is on the residential interior design page; what is decided at which stage is in the turnkey interior design guide, and every type of space is listed on the spaces page.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does a villa project take?
It depends on the scope; we give a firm duration only after the site survey and the list of decisions. Building out a villa takes longer than a flat of the same area: there are more items to be manufactured, outdoor work depends on the weather, and choosing and supplying the block of natural stone runs to its own schedule.
At what stage should you be brought into a villa project?
The earlier the better. In a villa still at shell stage the service routes, grille positions, wet area levels and window opening dimensions can all still be changed; the same decisions taken later become breaking-out work. We also work on existing, occupied villas; there the process begins by surveying what is in place.
Can a villa be renovated while we go on living in it?
It depends on the scope. Where the work can be split floor by floor or zone by zone, staying in the house is usually possible with dust barriers and a separate route for site traffic. Where the wet areas and the services are renewed throughout, moving out for a period generally gets there faster.
What determines a villa budget most?
Scope, far more than floor area: the number of wet areas, the proportion of natural stone and how readily it can be sourced, the ratio of bespoke joinery to off-the-shelf products, whether the mechanical and electrical services are being renewed, the extent of the outdoor work, and whether demolition is needed in the existing building. We settle all of it at the first site survey.
Do you handle landscaping (garden design) on villa projects as well?
No — the interior is the centre of our work, and landscape design is carried out by teams who specialise in it. We do resolve the transitions between inside and outside, though — terrace paving, levels and drainage, external lighting and socket services — in coordination with your landscape team. That has to happen before landscaping starts, because most of the services go in before the ground is closed.
Do you take on a small villa too, or only large-scale work?
We set no condition on scale. What matters is that the villa has a layered pattern of living: more than one floor, an outdoor space such as a garden or a terrace, and a plan in which daytime and night-time use are separated.