Step inside Dar Ambrosia in Assilah, Morocco

Dar Ambrosia is a new property available for rent in Assilah, Morocco designed by design writer and designer Pauline de Villiers Brettell. Here, in her own words, Pauline shares her design journey.

I have been travelling between the UK and Morocco for over ten years and am finally starting to make that shift a more permanent one, so the refurbishment on this fantastic house in the medina of Assilah in northern Morocco couldn’t have come at a better time.

While on the surface, Morocco is an interior designers dream with its tiles and carpets, colours and patterns, digging below that surface can be more of a challenge – there are certainly no carefully curated colour swatches here when it comes to choosing paint and being based in the bijoux seaside medina of Assilah, where the small merchant is king, there is no one-stop hardware shop.

Finding curtain rings can (and did) involve an afternoon of walking from one small shop to another, light fittings were bought that on closer inspection were never going to fit, cushions were delivered in sort-of the right fabric, but you learn to choose your battles when it comes to an exact shade of beige.

And I must confess although I have written about design and worked with artisans and designers for most of my career, it has been a while since I have had to take on more than my own home – time to put the proverbial money where my mouth was which was a little daunting – I thought I could do it – most of the time!

I did have an incredibly valuable and inspiring zoom session with colour consultant Charlotte Cropper who, although the colours in question weren’t locally available, inspired and helped me collect my ideas and develop a story. The colours in the house evolved and were built around the constraints of certain elements that were already in place – flooring, tiles etc.

The biggest and most fundamental change was painting all the exterior woodwork into a neutral colour (it had been a strident Moroccan red) Having pared everything back we could start to insert more colour again. Getting the right colour often took several attempts and if you ever venture past the small paint shop at the top end of town you will see a fifty of shades of that ever-elusive colour beige dabbed on the wall in my attempt to get just the right colour for the woodwork!

All the bathrooms were tiled in the traditional zellige style which was a mix of a single colour and terracotta – the tile colour therefore became the reference for the rest of the room. The kitchen again had existing black marble surfaces which needed to stay – instead of fighting it, I embraced the black and painted the entire room black. I did have a few moments of anxiety as the first coat went up – but it worked and was worth it. Colour saturation has been key in a lot of the interior spaces.

A fundamental part of this renovation has been the task of curation –this was a house with great bones but simply full of too much “stuff”. No matter how beautiful, too many pots, too many patterned painted surfaces and textiles wasn’t allowing the house to breathe, so removing in this case, was as important as adding.

Having made some space and pulled back the palette, the joy of being able to fill the house with the creativity of local artisans has outweighed all the other inconsistencies. Finding the oversized lampshades woven from dried date fronds that make a bold statement against the petrol blue walls of the dining room, was a moment of joy.

With this Grand Dame of a house (almost) completed, I am now embarking on a more personal and considerably more modest project where, having spent the last six months working with such intensity of colour, I am painting everything white…it makes those trips to the paint shop so much easier – for now!!

To find more details about Dar Ambrosia or toybook the property, please contact Pauline de Villiers Brettell.

Photo credit: Chadia Talha