A Former Attic Becomes a Dreamy Small Space in France

I can’t explain what it is, exactly, but there’s something about a pitched roof that just makes me feel so cozy. This tiny Paris apartment, with its rustic beams and dramatically sloped ceiling, is like a warm hug in building form.

The apartment, located in the commune of Ivry-sur-Seine, a few miles from the center of Paris, is a renovation of a two-room attic space. Renovating it presented a few challenges, not the least of them that the space’s walls, at the outside, are only about two feet tall. Bright white walls help to bounce light around the space, and the furniture hugs the ground, which helps the space to seem taller.

A hallway runs through the center of the apartment, connecting the living room and kitchen with the bedroom on the opposite side of the apartment.

The living room and kitchen are lovely. but the real centerpiece of the apartment is the bathroom, whose dramatic sloping roof and skylight make it a particularly inviting place to while away a few hours in the tub. In a rather unconventional move, the space’s designer has placed a wall of steel-framed windows between the bathroom and the hallway, which keeps the bathroom wall from breaking up an already teenie space. It also allows the occupants to enjoy a view of the bathroom from any part of the apartment, and lets light from the skylight filter through to the rest of the apartment. (There’s a curtain that can be drawn to make the bathroom more private, and the toilet is actually in a separate room across the hall—a fairly common setup for older Parisian apartments.)

By adding as few walls as possible (and partially erasing the bathroom wall with a strip of windows), the design preserves a spacious feel in the apartment, and allows the dramatic roof to soar, cathedral-like, over the whole space.

To see more of this home, check out the full tour at Arch Daily.