When the new owners of a home on the Western Cape approached local firm Antoni Associates, they requested an interior offering “barefoot luxury,” one that would balance a contemporary feel with natural materials. The young family, resettling from the city to the green acres of the Pearl Valley Golf Estate, was seeking a more relaxed lifestyle in a home that would also allow them to entertain guests on a grand scale.

Central to the house’s plan is a swimming pool and boma, a recessed fire pit surrounded by seating, traditional to South African homes. The boma’s timber seating and decking flows gracefully into the interior through ceiling-height sliding glass doors. When open, the doors allow traffic to flow from the interior spaces – including two generous lounges flanking the pool – to the poolside area and deck. A formal dining room and a more casual eating area next to the open-plan kitchen and bar sit beyond the lounges, and allow traffic to circulate throughout the entire main floor area, indoors and out.

A material palette based around wood and stone formed the foundation of AA’s strategy for meeting the client’s request. Wood floors and raw wood furniture appear throughout the home, and feature walls are lined with slabs of raw grey limestone; in one lounge, a double-sided fireplace is clad in white marble. The ground floor ceiling features expanses of raw off-shutter concrete, left exposed to contrast with sleek white sections of finished ceiling.

The design team incorporated prominent lighting effects into this two-tone ceiling; peripheral areas of the bulkheads are lined with concealed strip lighting, which casts a warm glow across the textured areas of exposed concrete. For focal areas like the dining tables, recessed spotlights are supplemented with an array of carefully selected pendants, including eye-catching pieces from Marset, Moooi, and Tom Dixon.

Many of the objects used throughout the house were custom finished from the collection of Okha, a South Africa-based furniture company that works closely with local manufacturers and craftspeople.