E-mail Article
Printer Friendly
Share Article
French connection
By filling her Jumeirah villa with pieces from her native France, Julie Renaudie feels much closer to home.
It's a familiar sentiment among many expats setting up a new life abroad - feeling unsettled and homesick in an unfamiliar country.
For Julie Renaudie, who left behind her life in Paris five years ago to begin a new one in Dubai, her attachment to her French roots was so strong that she decided the only way to settle into her new life would be to create her own small corner of France in her Jumeirah villa.
When she first moved into the four-bedroom villa, she admits that she found the transition from Paris apartment life a bit of a shock to the system. "At the beginning when we first arrived in Dubai, we used the living room as our bedroom," laughs Julie.
"Everybody told us you're completely crazy! You've got four bedrooms and a huge house and you're sleeping in the living room! But I told them I need to concentrate my life and to feel like I'm feeling in France and in France you don't have these kind of spacious houses like you do in Dubai."
Eventually however, once Julie had made the decision to settle and start up her own business here, (the French guesthouse La Maison d'Hôtes) she made it her number one priority to transform the villa into a cosy family home.
The first thing she did was to paint the walls in warm neutral tones.
"When we arrived here everything was white and really square with high ceilings. It felt like a hospital for me," remembers Julie. "I very quickly needed to paint the walls and to try and create some small spaces which had some more warmth to them and felt more personal."
Unsurprisingly Julie has injected her personality into the design of her home with a distinctly French flair. Many of her most treasured items of furniture are ones that she brought with her when she moved over from Paris.
One of her favourite pieces is the dining room table, which she designed herself.
"It's a personal creation, I made it a long time ago," says Julie. "It's a very simple design with wood all around the edges and stone in the middle. It looked really huge when we had it in France but now that we've brought it here to Dubai it looks so small."
Quick Links(Residental)
Filter by address:
No Comments