INSPIRATION UBUD | OWNER’S VILLA

This is the first building of the Inspiration Ubud retreat complex, and the only one built for a family rather than for guests: the owner’s private villa, deep in the jungle. She built it for herself and her children, then opened the gate — guest villas, treehouses and the spa came after, and the whole retreat grew out of this one house. She came to us with a single sentence: the house has to say straight away that I live here. What grew out of it was a temple a woman builds for herself.

One gesture runs through the whole house: the wave of a headboard, pink in the mother’s room, cream with a relief in the daughter’s, dark timber slats in the son’s. A bird repeats alongside it — a forest panel, a plaster swallow, a bird in a frame. The palette is fire, not sky: ochre, bordeaux, terracotta, dark wood, brass. Not one cold shade, not one sterile white.

Nature does not stay behind the glass. Palms stand inside the living room as part of the interior, forest panels wrap the bed, a tiger canopy hangs in the playroom. Forms run soft — rounded chests, sculptural lights, mirrors framed like set foam, a terracotta octopus over the bed. The client’s own rule decided everything else: if an object has nothing to say, it does not go in.