This family home interior design in Milan sits on a quiet stretch of Via Lamarmora, in the Porta Romana district, and it started from one clear request. A young family wanted a home that could open up for guests and still close around private life, so arcHITects built the whole plan around that double need. The result, called Warm House, is welcoming and convivial when the family entertains, and calm and private when the day is over.

A family home interior design in Milan split into two worlds

The apartment is read as two areas. The first is generous and social. An open kitchen keeps its own space around a central island, and it flows into the living room and the dining area, which together also shape a small entrance. This is the part of the house made for people arriving, cooking, eating and staying late. The second area is the night zone, and it is completely separate. You reach it through a secret door, a flush panel that disappears into the wall, so the two lives of the house, the shared one and the private one, never get in each other’s way.

The night zone and the twin bathrooms

Behind that hidden door there are three bedrooms and a dressing room plus a service room. The main suite holds the most personal idea in the project: a his&hers bathroom that splits in two. Step down from the left or the right of the bed and you enter one of two mirror-image bathrooms, joined in the middle by a shared shower. Each side was finished to the taste of one of the owners, with artistic wallpaper. A blue terrazzo wall and a freestanding tub giving character to the main bathroom.

Wood, colour and light

Warmth is the thread that ties the home together, and it comes mostly from wood. Walnut screens made of vertical battens act as soft dividers between spaces, letting light and sound pass while still marking a threshold. Chevron oak runs underfoot across the day zone. Almost everything else is bespoke: the wardrobes, a walnut bar with a diamond wine rack, and the slatted oak wall in the main bedroom that hides its own flush door. Every piece of furniture here was designed from scratch for this family.

Colour is used with a light hand. Walls stay soft and warm, then a deep blue appears in the dining area, gentle lilacs and periwinkles settle the bedrooms, and the nursery is dressed in pale pink stripes. Lighting was treated as its own project, from a hoop chandelier over the table to a scatter of designer fixtures from well-known Italian brands placed through the rooms.

A home made to be shared

The brief behind Warm House was really about how a family lives. It had to welcome friends around a table one evening and shelter a young child the next morning, and the split plan lets it do both without compromise. Nothing feels temporary or off the shelf, because the studio drew each element for the people who live here.

The setting suits that idea. Via Lamarmora sits in Porta Romana, a residential part of Milan close to the Rotonda della Besana and a short distance from the centre. This is the sort of work arcHITects has done since 2009, taking a real brief from real people and building a finished, liveable home rather than a showroom.

See more of our residential projects or read about the studio behind this family home interior design in Milan.

Design: HIT arcHITects – Piantini
Photo F. Ferrarese