Hong Kong interior designer’s Provençal holiday home is a 21st-century take on tradition

If paradise is olive trees and vines accompanied by the chirping of cicadas in summer and log fires in winter, then Eve Mercier has found – and enhanced – it. Deep in the wine country of Provence, in south­eastern France, she has created a 21st-century take on a traditional Provençal two-storey house, where stark white Spanish pavers lead across the gravel to the 6,500 sq ft stone mas (manor), redolent of lavender.

A Parisian interior designer and art historian, Mercier set up the Insight School of Interior Design, in Chai Wan, in 2013, a year after she and her husband, Edouard, returned to live in Hong Kong following several years in Europe. While their work keeps them here, they spend Christmas, the summer and often Easter outside Aix-en-Provence with their four children and yellow labrador.

Mercier worked with Marseilles architect Renaud Tarrazi on the five-bedroom, five-bath­room house and her priorities were light and views, uncluttered space and spaciousness, har­mony with nature and generous rooms flowing into each other, designed for entertaining.

Downstairs, the living area, kitchen and master bedroom give onto the terrace. Also on this level is a small library that leads to a den-like television room. The children’s and guest rooms are upstairs.

Light circulates and half-landings add to a house that is ageless and easy to get around, but full of small, delightful surprises: steps and staircases seguing from wide to narrow and back to wide again; and views from horizontal windows and round portholes. Inspiration, she says, came from bright, airy houses in Australia, the Aman Hotels in Phuket and Bali, and, naturally, Provence itself.

Planning for the house, on the site of an old barn in the family vineyard, began in 2001 and construction took three years. The family was living in London and Geneva then and Mercier flew over every week to supervise the work.