Saffron House

An eleven-key boutique property in a restored Portuguese-era villa, designed to feel like a well-kept private house rather than a hotel.

The brief asked for a property with no lobby, no reception desk and no corridors — guests are met at the door and taken to their room. That single decision reorganised the entire plan around a sequence of courtyards instead of circulation.

The original villa provided six rooms. Five more sit in a new laterite wing set behind the garden wall, low enough that the villa remains the only thing visible from the lane.

Every room is different. Shared elements — the beds, the bathroom fittings, the linen — are consistent, but no two rooms share a plan, a palette or a view. Operationally harder; considerably more memorable.