Second Homes: Why holiday houses demand a different discipline
A second home is not a primary residence with rattan. That is the mistake I see most often, and it is an expensive one: a family takes the house they already live in, softens the palette, adds a few pieces of coastal furniture, and wonders two summers later why the place feels like a set rather than a home. Second home interior design is its own discipline. It answers to a different climate, a different rhythm of presence and absence, a different cast of people, and a different set of materials — the ones that survive both the season you are there and the long months you are not. In my experience, the projects that work are the ones where the owner understood from the first meeting that they were designing a different kind of house, not a copy of the one they left behind.
At Yasmine B Design, we design holiday homes across the South of France, on the coast, in the countryside outside Paris and London, and for London and Dubai homeowners who divide their year between two properties. The brief arrives in different accents: a bastide in Provence, a house by the sea in Portugal, a chalet, a farmhouse, a villa whose garden matters more than the living room, a Georgian property in Holland Park that a family from Dubai wants for the London summer; but the questions underneath it are always the same. How does the house behave when nobody is in it? Who is here in August, and how many of them are children? What does the light do at six in the evening? What will this stone floor look like after ten years of sand and salt and bare feet? The answers decide the plan, the materials, and the atmosphere long before anyone opens a fabric book. This article sets out how I think about a second home and the design process behind it: the logic of climate and landscape, the logic of absence, the logic of guests, the question of comfort, and the timeless materials that make a holiday house age with grace instead of apology. It is not a list of second home decorating ideas or trends; it is the way an interior designer and interior architect actually approaches a vacation property.
Start with the landscape, not the mood board
A primary residence is designed around a life already in motion; school runs, work, the furniture you own. A second home is designed around a place. That is the first and most liberating difference. The landscape, the light, the location, and the local building culture are the brief; everything in the interior should feel as though it grew out of them. Trends are irrelevant here; the cultural context is the only style guide worth following.
In practice, this means I spend the first visit to a holiday house outside it. Where does the sun rise and where does it fall? Which rooms will be unbearable at three in the afternoon in July, and which will be cold and damp in a February visit? Is the surrounding context a garden, a vineyard, a cliff, a village street? A house on the Mediterranean coast wants thick walls, shaded terraces, and cool limestone underfoot; a house in the Normandy countryside wants fireplaces, wool, and glass windows that frame the green rather than the sea; a mews property in east London wants warmth, lamps, and a garden room. The interior architecture follows the climate first and the aesthetic second — a principle we return to in every project, and one I explore in depth in the studio's piece on Mediterranean influences in contemporary interiors, where the whole vocabulary of shade, mass, and whitewash exists for reasons of temperature before reasons of taste.
Local culture matters just as much. A holiday house that ignores its region; the vernacular roof, the regional stone, the way local houses handle the wind, always feels imported. The most timeless second homes I know borrow generously from their surroundings: the terracotta of the village, the lime plaster of the farmhouses nearby, the particular blue-green of the shutters two streets away. The result is a house that belongs, and belonging is the deepest luxury a holiday house can offer.
Design for absence as carefully as for presence
Here is the unglamorous truth about a second home: it is empty most of the year. A vacation home that is used for eight weeks spends forty-four weeks closed — shutters down, heating off or on a low setting, no one to notice the leak, the damp, the mouse, the fabric fading in the one window somebody forgot to shade. A primary home is looked after every day. A second home has to look after itself — and the easiest time to make that possible is during the renovation, not afterwards.
This changes the material palette completely. I choose surfaces that improve with stillness rather than suffer from it. Stone floors; limestone, travertine, terracotta, that need nothing and look better for a little wear. Lime plaster and mineral paints that breathe and do not trap moisture behind them. Oiled or brushed timber rather than lacquered finishes that crack in an unheated house. Solid, heavy furniture that does not warp. Linen, cotton, and wool that can be washed, aired, and left. I avoid delicate silks, unsealed marble worktops that stain if a lemon is left on them, veneers that lift in humidity, and anything that needs a person to tend it. Houseplants are the classic mistake: beautiful in the photograph, dead by the October visit.
Maintenance is part of the design process, not an afterthought. Every second home I plan has a proper, functional utility space; a laundry, a store for cushions and outdoor furniture, a place for the pool equipment, the bicycles, the surfboards, the wet dogs. There is a cupboard for the cleaner, a system for the keys, and a way of closing the house in ten minutes rather than an hour. The floor plan that anticipates absence is the one that lets you arrive, open the doors, and be on holiday within a quarter of an hour. That speed of arrival, the feeling that the house is waiting for you rather than demanding something of you, is the whole point of a second home, and it is designed in the plan, not added later.
The people problem: guests, children, and the long table
A primary residence is designed for the people who live there. A holiday house is designed for the people who visit and there are always more of them than you planned. Three couples and their children for a week. Grandparents for a month. A friend who arrives for the weekend and stays for ten days. The property must be generous without being a hotel, and the space planning is where that balance is struck, it is the part of residential design I spend longest on in a holiday home.
I think of a second home as a series of zones with different levels of privacy. At the centre, a large communal room, kitchen, dining, and living together, or at least connected, because holidays happen around a long table and a kitchen that everyone can be in at once. Around it, bedrooms arranged so that families can have a private wing, guests have their own bathroom, and grandparents are not on the top floor. If the site allows, a separate guest house or a converted outbuilding is worth every centime: it gives visitors independence and gives the owners their house back at midnight.
Children reshape everything. Bunk rooms that sleep four, with hard-wearing floors and washable walls. A boot room by the door where sand, wet towels, and swimming things live so they never reach the sitting room. Outdoor showers. Storage for the games, the paddleboards, the ten bicycles. In the family homes I design, I always say that beauty has to survive daily life, and in a holiday house, daily life is louder, wetter, and barefoot. I've written about how designing a family home means designing for the mess as well as the moments, and every word of it applies twice over in August.
Comfort in a second home is also a different quantity. People sleep later, sit longer, and read more, so everything must be more comfortable than at home, not less. The sofas must be deep enough to sleep on. The beds must be as good as the ones at home — better, because you are here to rest. There should be more places to sit outside than inside, and at least one of them must be in the shade all afternoon. And there should be a table long enough for everyone, inside and out, because the table is where a holiday house earns its keep.
Materials that survive sun, salt, and the years
I have already touched on materials, but they deserve their own discipline, because the environment of a second home, coastal or mountain, hot or humid, is harder on surfaces than a city apartment ever is. Salt air corrodes metal. Ultraviolet light bleaches fabric and timber. Sand acts like sandpaper on soft floors. Heat and cold, cycling through an unheated house, open joints and warp panels.
My rule is simple: choose natural materials with a history in that landscape, and choose them in their most robust form. In the South of France that means limestone and terracotta floors, lime-washed walls, solid oak or chestnut joinery, wrought iron and brass rather than plated steel, and linen in tones that look better faded. On the coast, it means stone, unfinished teak, marine-grade fittings, and fabrics designed for outdoor use even indoors. In the mountains, it means larch, wool, and stone that holds heat. The materials should look as though they could have been there for a hundred years and will still be there in another hundred. I set out my full thinking on how surfaces should age in the studio's guide to choosing materials for a home that will age beautifully, and the principle is at its purest in a holiday house: patina is the goal, not the enemy.
Colour follows the same logic, and so does art: a second home is the place for the pieces that are too playful, too local, or too large for the city, the painting bought in the village, the ceramics from the coast, the photograph of the landscape outside the window. A second home's palette should be drawn from the immediate landscape, the ochre of the earth, the grey-green of the olive, the chalk of the cliff, the blue that only exists in that particular sea, so that the interior and the view read as one composition. I keep the palette tight, warm, and matte, because bright light on a glossy surface is exhausting, and because a house that is quiet in colour lets the landscape do the talking. Strong colour, where it appears, goes on things that can be changed: a cushion, a painted door, a single tiled wall in a bathroom.
Light, air, and outdoor living
A second home is a house you experience mostly in daylight, mostly with the doors open. Natural light and natural ventilation are the two most important design tools, and both are architectural decisions rather than decorative ones. I look at where openings can be enlarged or added, how cross-ventilation can be achieved without air conditioning, where shutters and pergolas can throw shade, and how the threshold between inside and outside can be flattened so the terrace becomes a real room.
Outdoor living is not an add-on in a holiday house; it is half the plan. A covered dining terrace that works at midday and at midnight. A summer kitchen or at least a proper grill close to the table. Loungers in the sun and a sofa in the shade. A pool that is positioned for the view and for privacy rather than dropped in the middle of the lawn. Outdoor lighting on dimmers so the garden does not disappear at dusk. And, crucially, storage for all the outdoor furniture, because cushions left out for a winter are cushions thrown away in spring.
Inside, artificial lighting should be layered and low. Holiday evenings are long and soft, and a house lit by lamps, candles, and a few well-placed wall lights feels like a holiday; a house lit by downlights feels like a kitchen showroom. I specify lighting in a second home with the same care as in a city apartment, with one difference: everything must be easy to use. No one on holiday wants to learn a control system.
The second home as a different way of living
The most interesting thing about designing a holiday house is that it lets people be someone slightly different. A client who lives in a formal Parisian apartment can have a farmhouse kitchen with a scrubbed table and open shelves. A London family used to grey and glass can have colour and terracotta. A Dubai couple can have a cold, quiet, wood-lined house in the mountains. The second home is a permission slip and for many of our clients, working with the studio on a holiday property is the first time they have allowed themselves to be creative with a home at all.
I encourage clients to write the brief for a second home as a description of the life they want to live there, not the rooms they need, but the days they imagine. Breakfast where? Lunch for how many? Where do you read? Where do the children disappear to? Where do you sit with a glass of wine at seven? The plan follows those answers, and the result is a house that is not a diminished version of the primary residence but a fully realised version of a different way of living. That, to me, is what luxury means in a holiday house: not the cost of the finishes, but the precision with which the house serves the life it was built for.
Common questions about second home interior design
How is designing a second home different from designing a primary residence?
A second home answers to its landscape and climate first, must survive long periods of absence, and hosts far more people than a primary home. Materials, plan, and storage are chosen for those conditions rather than for daily convenience.
What materials work best in a holiday house?
Natural, robust materials with a history in the local building culture: stone and terracotta floors, lime plaster, solid timber, brass and iron, linen and wool. Avoid anything that needs tending or that suffers from humidity, salt, or strong sun.
How should a second home be laid out for guests?
Around a generous communal room and a long table, with bedrooms zoned for privacy, a family wing, guest rooms with their own bathrooms, and ideally a separate guest house or converted outbuilding. Add a boot room and plenty of storage for the equipment a holiday generates.
Should a second home match the style of my main home?
No. A holiday house should belong to its place, not to your other house. It is an opportunity to live differently, more relaxed, more colourful, closer to the outdoors and the design should reflect that.
How do I make a second home low-maintenance?
Plan for absence: choose surfaces that need nothing, include a proper utility and storage space, design a quick close-down routine, and avoid delicate finishes, houseplants, and complex technology. The house should look after itself between visits.
Is it worth hiring an interior architect or interior designer for a holiday home?
Yes, particularly when the property needs structural changes, enlarged openings, a new kitchen position, a terrace connection — as well as decoration. A 360° interior design studio resolves climate, plan, and materials together rather than in sequence, and manages the renovation team on site while you are elsewhere; which, with a second home, you almost always are.
A different place. A different rhythm. A house that knows the difference.
At Yasmine B Design, we bring interior architecture and interior design together in one 360° practice — the structural thinking that lets a holiday house open to its landscape and the decorative sensibility that makes it feel like yours the moment you arrive — for second homes, villas, and country houses across Paris, the South of France, Dubai, and London. Our team handles the whole process, from the first survey to the last cushion, for homeowners who cannot be on site every week. If you are planning a house for the weeks that matter most, that is exactly the conversation to start: yb@yasmineb.design.