Welcome to our gallery featuring the bright and sunny Casa Largo dos Martires by Studio Arte.

This project is the result of a complete refurbishment of a family house in Algarve, Portugal’s southernmost region.

Making the most of its sunny, warm climate, the home is a surprising eruption of bold features and open, welcoming design.

With one look at the exterior of this home, wrapped in white and topped a by Spanish tile roof, you can tell it’s designed for a resolutely comfortable climate zone. The structure, flush with large windows and white tones, takes utmost advantage of its temperate location.

The interior is wrapped in white, just as the facade is, making for a bright, welcoming, and open feeling space.

Color comes both subtly and in sudden bursts via elegant furniture selection and a spare floor plan. The light interior meshes with both a largely natural palette and sudden eruptions of rainbow tones, depending on the room.

The building itself shows off its structural elements in many ways, including white painted exposed ceiling beams and stone flooring. Between these elements, a bevy of varied furniture designs populates the home to remarkable effect.

As seen in the image above, there are massive, full height window sets that grant an abundance of sunlight to the interior. These also have the advantage of exposing the interior rooms to expansive views of the surrounding countryside.

Several timeless elements throughout help anchor the home in the past while blurring its modern renovation, including metal pipe stair railings and tile patios on the exterior.

Overall, the home is an exquisite example of how a modern refurbish job can maintain the old world character of a home while bringing it up to date with modern amenities.

Photography: First Stop Photography
Architecture: João Carriço
Creative Concept Development and Design: Arnold Aarssen

The home is wrapped by a low-slung stone wall, filled with terraced garden spaces. These small contained plots house delicately manicured bushes and flowers alike, complementing the sunny demeanor of the house.

The low level exterior patio seen here is accessible both via glass sliding doors from inside the home and a staircase that leads to upper level exterior spaces with expansive views.

Moving inside, we see our first example of the subtly placed but riotous color injected in the home. This midcentury modern sectional is spiked with brightly colored pillows, wrapping a glass and bright orange metal coffee table at center.

The large open plan kitchen and dining room area features more restrained use of color, mostly kept to the natural wood dining table and a few colorful accents. The rugged look of the natural wood countertops and shelving offers a counterpoint to the sleekly modern white walls.

Turning slightly to the left, we can see how the full height expanses of glass are retractible, sliding to open fully toward the private courtyard patio area. This offers both loads of natural light to the interior and easy access to the outdoors.

Here’s a cozy relaxing space adjacent to one of the bedrooms, with its own unique color palette, courtesy of carefully selected furniture. A suite of blue tones appears on the wingback sofa, table, rug, and more.

The adjacent bedroom shares this bold yet restrained blue palette, sporting a shade darker on the mirror frame and bathroom access curtain. The white tones make these subtle appearances of color truly pop.

This secondary bedroom centers on a massive modern bed frame with subtle pink sheeting. An attached bathroom is accessed through a highly patterned yellow door, next to a small white vanity area.

The primary bedroom is unified by sharp black accents on the furniture, including bed frame, chairs, and mirror frame. Even here, the large windows spill abundant sunlight into the bright white space.

In this room, as with others throughout the home, the exposed beams of the ceiling can be plainly seen, high above the stone flooring. The minimalist decorating really stands out in such a starkly painted space.

Finally, we reach the rooftop patio space, decked with natural wood and sporting a jacuzzi with full expansive views of the surrounding homes and countryside. A skylight offers a brief glimpse down into the home.