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A fifth-floor Paris apartment makes a swimming pool its design brief. Acte Deux founders Johanna Lapray and Hugo L’ahelec reshaped a 19th-century home around pool colors, rounded geometry, reflective surfaces and carefully staged light. The result moves from a bright, social living area to a yellow-lit curved corridor and a deliberately darker bedroom—an apartment that feels less like a theme room than a sequence of atmospheric transitions.
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The idea: translate a pool, not copy one
The project began with an image rather than a conventional style label. Lapray and L’ahelec studied swimming pools in still photography and film, then imagined “a modernist vacation home in the south of France, with bold, primary colors.” Their approach turns pool sensations—blue water, sun glare, graphic lane lines, chrome, rounded edges and changing privacy—into architectural decisions.
That distinction matters. There is no literal indoor pool in the apartment and no attempt to make every room blue. Instead, color, material and light perform different jobs. Blue identifies the kitchen and bathroom; yellow marks the corridor; a black wall and wood paneling make the bedroom absorb light. The apartment reads as a chain of moods, with each room related to the pool idea but not identical to the last.
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A question that shaped the kitchen
The designers describe their starting point plainly: “We were guided by a hypothetical question: What would a kitchen inspired by swimming pools look like?” That question allowed playful details to become functional architecture. A kidney bean-shaped sink references the familiar outline of California pools, while floor tile is arranged to suggest a swimming lane.
Lapray and L’ahelec call the sink reference “light-hearted fun,” but the detail also shows how the renovation works. A recognizable pool shape is reduced to one useful object; the rest of the room carries the idea through color, line and shine rather than additional literal motifs.
Opening the apartment to Paris
The first major move was spatial. The street-facing veranda was combined with the living room, bringing the city view and more natural light into the apartment’s largest living space. This is the public, outward-looking end of the plan: the place where the apartment connects most directly with Paris.
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1Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches2Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems3Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteThe redesign began with that layout change rather than with surface decoration. Once the veranda and living room became one larger volume, daylight and the street-facing outlook could work as part of the interior experience. The apartment’s oak floor was selected for its knots and rustic character, giving the bright room a tactile, imperfect base instead of a polished showroom floor.
The source describes the home as occupying the fifth floor of a 19th-century building. It does not publish the apartment’s overall area, renovation budget, completion date or exact address, so those details cannot be inferred from the tour.
How the color map organizes the rooms
Color is used as a navigational system. Rather than applying one palette everywhere, the designers assign dominant tones to particular zones and repeat selected materials so the changes still feel connected.
| Area | Dominant color or finish | Design role |
|---|---|---|
| Living room and veranda | Natural oak with rustic knots; daylight from the street side | Creates the open, social arrival space and preserves a tactile foundation. |
| Kitchen | Blue, pink, gray and yellow; chrome details | Combines pool references with a Memphis-inspired graphic language. |
| Hallway | Yellow glow from colored ceiling bulbs | Turns circulation into a theatrical transition toward the private rooms. |
| Bathroom | Pool-blue mosaic, azure-tinted shower glass, gray mosaic floor and yellow enameled fixtures | Builds a layered, water-associated palette without relying on one blue surface. |
| Bedroom | Black wall and wood paneling | Absorbs light and provides a deliberately intimate counterpoint to the bright front rooms. |
The kitchen’s combination of straight lines and circles, along with chrome accents and the blue-pink-gray-yellow palette, nods to Memphis Group design. The reference is expressed through geometry and contrast rather than through a collection of recognizable furniture pieces.
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The kitchen: lanes, circles and reflective detail
The kidney bean sink is the kitchen’s clearest California-pool allusion. Its curved outline interrupts the rectilinear logic normally associated with cabinetry and counters. On the floor, blue mosaic tile is laid so the pattern suggests a swimming lane, giving movement to a surface that is usually treated as a neutral background.
Color carries the rest of the composition. Blue establishes the water reference; pink and yellow keep the room from becoming monochrome; gray settles the palette; chrome supplies small flashes of reflection. The mix of circles and straight lines makes the room feel graphic, while the tile scale keeps the reference tied to a real working kitchen.
For painters studying the room, the useful lesson is proportion. The pool idea is strongest when one unmistakable gesture—the sink outline or lane-like floor—works alongside quieter supporting colors. Repeating every reference at full intensity would flatten the hierarchy.
A curved corridor that changes the pace
From the social rooms, a long corridor curves around the inner courtyard and leads toward the bedroom. Architectural Digest reports that the corridor measures more than 100 square feet; that figure is source-reported and is not an independent measurement.
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The corridor is not treated as leftover circulation. Colored bulbs in its ceiling lights create a yellow glow, so the route itself becomes an atmospheric room. The curved plan softens the transition physically, while the artificial color separates it from the daylight-led living area.
Why the transition works
- Public to private: The veranda and living room face the street; the corridor turns inward toward the bedroom.
- Natural to colored light: Daylight dominates the front of the apartment, while the hallway’s yellow illumination is deliberately produced by its fixtures.
- Open geometry to enclosure: The broad living space gives way to a curving route that controls what is revealed next.
These are design readings of the reported arrangement, not measured lighting results. The tour does not publish illuminance levels, color-temperature readings or performance tests.
The bathroom repeats the pool vocabulary in layers
The bathroom uses several related finishes instead of one uninterrupted blue field. Pool-blue mosaic covers the principal surfaces, an azure-tinted glass shower adds a transparent blue layer, gray mosaic flooring grounds the room, and yellow enameled fixtures provide a contrasting accent.
That layering keeps the water reference legible while giving each material a separate visual task. Mosaic supplies small-scale texture; tinted glass changes what is seen through the shower enclosure; gray prevents the floor from competing with the brighter blue; yellow links the bathroom back to the kitchen and corridor.
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Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Repeated colors and mosaic tile help connect the kitchen and bathroom even though they serve different functions. The connection is perceived through material rhythm and color echoes rather than through identical layouts.
The bedroom: a controlled drop in brightness
At the end of the corridor, the bedroom reverses the apartment’s earlier brightness. A black wall and wood paneling absorb light, creating a more theatrical and private setting than the kitchen or living room. The contrast is intentional: the apartment does not maintain one constant energy from front to back.
Wood prevents the dark wall from reading as a single flat block, while the black surface gives the room visual weight. Together they make the bedroom feel like a destination at the end of the curved route, not simply another color-coded zone.
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California blinds make privacy part of the palette
The blinds provide the most direct day-to-night transformation. When open, they frame the city and keep the apartment connected to Paris. When closed, they filter the view and produce a soft pink light, shifting the mood toward seclusion.
The designers describe the change this way: “When they’re open, we’re in Paris, in the city with its bustling streets. When they’re closed, it’s a return to a calm atmosphere, with the soft pink light creating something that feels removed from daily life, like a vacation home.” The effect is atmospheric rather than a published performance specification; the article does not state fabric composition, openness percentages, insulation values or a lighting measurement.
This is a useful model for any color-led interior. A window treatment can be treated as an active color surface, not merely a device for glare control. The same walls can appear more urban in daylight and more retreat-like under filtered pink light.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the apartment teaches about painting with color
Assign each strong color a job
Blue identifies water-related spaces, yellow guides movement and adds warmth, pink modifies the kitchen and filtered daylight, and black establishes retreat. A palette becomes easier to control when every saturated color has a spatial role.
Use repetition to connect rooms
The kitchen and bathroom share mosaic language and recurring colors. Repetition creates continuity without requiring every surface to match. In a smaller renovation, repeating one tile tone, metal finish or accent color can achieve the same effect.
Let geometry carry part of the story
The kidney bean sink, lane-like floor layout, curved corridor and Memphis-influenced mix of circles and straight lines all communicate the pool idea without printed imagery. Rounded forms can soften a room dominated by cabinetry and walls; linear patterns can suggest movement across a floor.
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Design the route, not only the rooms
The yellow corridor shows why circulation deserves a paint and lighting strategy. A passage can establish a pause between activities, conceal the next room until arrival and provide a controlled shift in color temperature or brightness.
Keep a darker destination in reserve
The black bedroom wall demonstrates the value of contrast. If every room is bright and saturated, no space feels especially intimate. A dark, light-absorbing surface can make the brighter rooms feel more expansive by comparison.
Named elements in the tour
The story identifies Bandalux California blinds, Artemide Teti ceiling lights, colored bulbs and Neve Volante fixtures among the apartment’s specified elements. It does not provide product prices, current availability, bulb base or wattage information, control compatibility, or a renovation bill. Those specifications should be confirmed directly before a purchase or installation.
What is documented—and what is not
The apartment tour was written by Nicolas Milon for Architectural Digest on November 30, 2025, with photography by Jean-Baptiste Thiriet. It states that the tour first appeared in AD France and was translated by John Newton. The documented evidence supports the layout, materials, colors and designers’ quoted intentions described above.
No independent study, survey, market statistic, laboratory test, exact address, overall floor area, project completion date or budget is reported. The corridor’s “over 100 square feet” is the only dimensional figure supplied. Treat the apartment as a documented design case study, not as evidence that a particular color, blind or tile arrangement produces a measured performance outcome.
The Bottom Line
This Paris renovation makes pool imagery architectural by assigning color, geometry and light distinct roles: an open blue-and-chrome kitchen, a yellow curved passage, a layered blue bathroom and a dark bedroom. Its most transferable idea is not any single product or shade, but the way a home can move deliberately from public daylight to private, filtered atmosphere.
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