“In Lourmarin, Provence, sits Le Moulin, an old mill transformed into a hotel and village shop. Sitting opposite the chateau, it is a place to meet people and stay the night, a spot for locals and you.”
So reads the website of Le Moulin, lodgings transformed by the architects Marine Delaloy and Paula Alvarez de Toleda of the firm Jaune and the design team at Saint-Lazare. We’re enamored of every detail: the plaster walls and sisal floors; dashes of Provençal ochre all over, on glossy tiled tabletops and simple sink skirts (fitting for a firm whose name literally means “yellow”); and bundles of dried flowers. Have a look around.
Photography by Gaëlle Tronquit via Le Moulin.
Above: Make like Camus, once a resident of Lourmarin, and have a pastis en plain air. (His pseudonym, according to the hotel’s site, was Mr. Terrace.)
Above: Of the design perspective, the hotel writes: “There is no nostalgia, but rather an intentional sobriety, a way of directing the gaze to the village.” In Le Restaurant du Moulin, easy woven rugs mix with a dramatic arched ceiling.
Above: An asymmetrical window offers views of the garden. The woven chairs are by French company Midi.
Above: The material palette is a mix of plaster, ceramic (lights; objects), and glazed yellow tile.
Above: The glimpse that caught our attention. “Le Moulin’s position in the heart of the village meant we had to be open it up, to bring in even more warmth and comfort,” the architects told Le Moulin. “By giving it the style of a holiday house in the south of France, we made it feel more like a home than a hotel.”
Above: Beribboned straw hats serve as decor (and bring to mind the heroine of Linnea in Monet’s Garden).
Above: Each guest room is clad in sisal (on the floors, and on the wall behind the bed), with built-in niches and shuttered French windows.
Above: Each room is filled with “books by the authors who wrote and rewrote Provence: Jean Giono, Albert Camus, Marcel Pagnol, Frédéric Mistral, and Henri Bosco,” according to the hotel. “Their words are filled with lilting sun and color, invitations to escape.”
Above: Rattan lamps and yellow curtains.
Above: A testament to the hotel’s unfussy style: a day bed is wrapped in a wool blanket. (For similar ideas, see this week’s Save the Sofa: 5 Easy, Good-Looking Ways to Protect the Favorite Seat in the House.)
Above: The guest baths have tiled countertops and skirted storage.
Above: A curvilinear guest room—no right angles here.
Above: Pass a summer day with any number of quintessentially French activities: outdoor films on Sunday nights, “biking tours, with or without a picnic,” or a game of pétanque on the lawn.
For more, head to Hotel Le Moulin. (And for a look at its sister hotel, see our post Hotel Les Roches Rouges: Vintage Seaside Glamour on the Côte d’Azur).
