Can country-house antiques work in a sleek, sun-saturated Spanish villa?

We’re finally getting the keys to our new villa in Spain and are excited about the prospect of furnishing it. The problem is, all our furniture — and decorating experience — are from characterful but darker London period town houses. We’re not sure what to do with a white-and-glass contemporary villa flooded with so much sunlight. Where would you begin?

Congratulations! My first thought is: don’t feel threatened by your new white-walls-and-glass contemporary villa. You have experience of working with characterful London houses and this will only come in useful.

Personally, I love the idea of layering a modern building with antiques, colour, pattern and objects. It’s not as if a sleek building full of hard surfaces and straight lines requires a certain, set-in-concrete type of decoration, also all hard surfaces and straight lines. Not, anyway, if this isn’t what naturally appeals to you. There are no rules, and besides, I very much love the idea of contrasting a sea of glass and white walls with old furniture and a kaleidoscope of colour. It seems a little unexpected.

I’d like to talk about two Spanish properties which I hope might provide some decoration inspiration. First up is Alcuzcuz, a farmhouse turned hotel close to, but a world away from, shiny, glitzy Marbella. I haven’t visited but friends have, and I’ve spent several grey winter mornings looking longingly at photographs of its shady terraces and rooms richly stuffed with antiques. More than 30 years ago, the estate, home to his family for six generations, came into the hands of the late interior decorator Jaime Parladé; the farmhouse is now a boutique hotel operated by Parladé’s nephew Andrés.

Although the farmhouse was built in the 1850s, I do stand by the point that structures need not be steeped in history to feature rooms decorated with characterful antiques and eclectic textiles. Of course, this farmhouse is not exactly a contemporary villa, but inside it is a fairly blank canvas, as I am sure your house must too appear: its sitting room has bright white walls, which form a backdrop to an array of interesting objects.

As World of Interiors magazine notes, these kinds of interiors “are the culmination of decades of travel, collecting and creative experience, forming rich tapestries of not just one life, but many. Pulling this off requires genuine interest in each object and its place within a home.”

At Alcuzcuz, ultra-traditional English-country-house-style Howard sofas can be spotted alongside hand-painted Spanish tiles (more on tiles later). The overall look is Anglo-Andalusian — it’s unique, it’s personal and it’s very, very pleasing. (Booking myself in for a long weekend of poolside snoozes and plates of jamón Ibérico is at the top of my to-do list.)

Next on my list is Trasierra: back in the late 1970s interior decorator Charlotte Scott (who spent the first five years of her life in Madrid) left London and moved to Andalusia in search of a dream. Boy, did she find one. Hidden away in the hills north of Seville, Scott discovered a ruined olive mill and got to work restoring it.

She opened the estate to paying guests in 1992. I was lucky to visit for a friend’s 40th birthday party last summer, and I left feeling not only rejuvenated but highly inspired.

What ideas to take from here? Well, the look is much less cluttered-country-house than Alcuzcuz, but there is still an English flavour running through the place. It’s very breezy: lots of white fabrics, many green stripes, maybe the odd splash of chintz. I remember loving the sofas and dining chairs with their snowy white slipcovers; plants growing up the walls inside; beautiful old ceramics dotted around the place. Boula in Warwickshire is currently selling similar bowls to the ones I found at Trasierra: called lebrillos, these ceramics were used in food preparation and are recognisable through the use of green, blue, white and yellow polychrome decoration.

I’m a big fan of old Spanish tiles. In a gleaming new villa, how wonderful would a kitchen splashback made from antique tiles look? Based between London and Jerez de la Frontera, Andalusia, Maitland & Poate is a family-run business, grown from a love of old and original Spanish encaustic tiles. An enormous variety of tiles of different ages is on the website, and it’s easy to see how many individual tiles of a particular design are available. It’s hard to pick a favourite, but I’m enjoying a spectacularly ornate c1870 tile from the Rhonda region, with rustic colours of ochre, deep umber, cream and green.

The appeal of Trasierra and Alcuzcuz both, I reckon, is the fact that they feel much more like family homes than hotels. The layering of personal, well-chosen furniture, fabrics and objects imbues both buildings with warmth and wonderful atmosphere.

I really believe in this notion of interiors reflecting the rich tapestry of life, of many lives, and therefore I don’t believe you need to start totally and utterly from scratch with your new villa, or feel daunted about its architecture and how this will work with your existing knowledge of decorating. Bring cherished objects from London, layer them with new purchases, feel free to mix and let the decoration happen in a slow, thoughtful manner.

If you have a question for Luke about design and stylish living, email him at lukeedward.hall@ft.com. Follow him on Instagram @lukeedwardhall

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