French interior designer Marianne Evennou has a knack for color. Even for those of us on the Remodelista team for whom grey feels like a bold choice, Evennou has a way of making color look effortless: pairing rusts with pale greens, layering rooms in many shades of the same hue, using vibrant blues like others would a neutral. “Colors for me are like musical notes—they’re all good; you just have to adjust them to make a nice melody,” Evennou told Margot in our piece Home at the Office: Designer Marianne Evennou’s Paris Work Quarters and Pied-à-Terre.
As it turns out, Evennou has the same deft, magic touch when it comes to designing small spaces. Our latest favorite? A postage stamp-sized apartment in the Marais, next to Paris’ famed Marché des Enfants Rouges market. For this, Evennou was charged with creating a sophisticated but usable pied à terre for a Swiss art collector couple and their kids, all in 270 square feet. “It hadn’t been renovated for a long, long time,” Evennou says. “We kept the floor in the living room, with authentic tiles from the 18th century. The rest is not very authentic.” Join us as we take a look inside.
Above: Visitors step into a compact but bold entryway, with dark blue walls, bronze hooks, for corralling and displaying essentials; and—another trademark of Evennou’s—an interior window. Above: The entryway opens onto the main—and only—room, painted in “a sand color,” Evennou says. The small space had to be multifunctional, so she settled on a long, low plywood shelf along the left side of the room that serves as storage, mini office, and stairway, and low seating area on the right. Above: True to style, Evennou worked her color magic, balancing blues with reds and rusts, including the original terra cotta tiles. The rattan pendant lights are from Cinq Étoiles. Above: The graphic mural behind the couch sets apart the living area. The idea, Evennou says, is “instead of having a piece of art, creating a patchwork of colors with a very graphic and modern look in contrast with the story of the building. It’s the meeting point between the past and the future.” Above: Tucked under the plywood stairs at the back of the apartment is a petite galley kitchen, awash in shades of blue. (The entry is at left, through the blue door.) The mod floor tiles are by Claesson Koivisto Rune via Marrakech Design. Above: The well-fitted kitchen features counters that continue into a solid backsplash, making the space feel larger and more cohesive (see 16 Favorite Solid Marble Kitchen Backsplashes for more ideas). The sink is what Evennou calls a “timbre d’office“, the French expression for a petite, “stamp”-sized sink, and is from Villeroy and Bosch. Above: A pegboard makes use of the small space and keeps tools, towels, and twine within easy reach. The flush-mount light bulbs are from Zangra. Above: “I needed to have an office, bookshelves, storage for the kitchen, and a staircase,” Evennou says. Plywood that morphs into shelves, a staircase, and a low desk proved to be the solution. Here, under the stairs, the shelves hold glassware and wine. Above: The unit continues into low bookshelves and a simple desk. The irregular oval mirrors throughout, which help to bring in light and the illusion of more space, are the Morning Mirrors from M Nuance. Above: Evennou defined a tiny desk with a task light above. Above: Note how the tabletop also acts as a step in the staircase, which itself leads to a sleeping loft. Above: Evennou embraced the tininess of the upstairs sleeping loft, painting walls, ceiling, and beams alike in a pale green. Above: Minimal art and furniture keeps the space open and inviting, not claustrophobic. Above: The bath, also in blue, with another whimsical mirror from M Nuance.
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