A Modern French Home — Quiet Luxury Across Five Luminous Levels
A Modern French Home places a contemporary take on French elegance in Beijing, China, crafted by Shangceng Design as a multi-generational house of ritual and ease. Across five levels, the residence choreographs light, color, and classical proportion into daily routines, from shared meals to quiet reading corners. Family life unfolds through tailored rooms that respect each generation while holding everyone within a clear, cohesive interior narrative.
Sunlight threads through a classical colonnade, slipping between slender columns before landing in soft arcs on pale walls. Shadows move across velvet and stone as the day turns, tracing domestic rhythms with calm precision.
This multi-level house in Beijing is a modern French residence by Shangceng Design, planned for three generations who share one generous home. The project treats light and color as central tools, pairing them with symmetrical order and measured detailing to support daily life. Rooms feel composed yet relaxed, so ritual grows from proportion, texture, and hue rather than from ornament alone.
Staging The Communal Level
On the second floor, a double-height living room acts as the family theater, where a clear central axis sets a calm, almost ceremonial rhythm. A sapphire-blue velvet sofa anchors the volume, speaking across the room to an emerald green armchair while sunlight slips in through arched portals and curves gently across the off-white walls. Plaster moldings outline the envelope with restraint, and classical orders extend the architecture without weight, so the room feels airy yet warmly scaled for gathering. Here, everyday scenes gain a quiet sense of occasion through color and form.
The adjoining Chinese and Western kitchen reads as the working heart, laid out as an open-plan counterpart to the living room. Sleek cabinetry hides advanced appliances, leaving the eye to settle on the warm countertop where morning coffee, evening stir-fries, and late-night tea all find a place. Cooking sounds, subtle aromas, and small conversations turn this central zone into the soundtrack of family life. Nearby, the dining area easily hosts larger groups, catching the softening light that filters through sheer curtains as dinners stretch into lingering conversations.
A sunlit afternoon tea nook sits in the brightest corner, defined by a long table and carefully chosen tea pieces. Here, daylight slows on tabletops and ceramics, creating a gentle pause in the house for the hostess and her friends. Even the guest bathroom follows the chromatic script, repeating the blue of the living room sofa at the vanity and setting it off with metal handles that read as clear, compact accents.
Coloring The Private Realms
Within the more secluded floors, color becomes a narrative tool that marks age, personality, and memory. On the ground level, the elders stay within a French Chinoiserie suite where a bright tone energizes the room while deeper notes steady it, finding a balance between visual vitality and calm comfort. Safety and ease of movement guide the layout, but the palette keeps the atmosphere dignified and alive. Personal habit and cultural reference sit together in this tailored mix.
Children occupy the third floor, each room set to a distinct chromatic key that grows with its owner. The son’s room rests on charcoal black, quiet yet strong, with off-white textured wallcovering catching light in a tactile way that softens the contrast. A custom display shelf near the desk lines up cherished models and awards, turning achievements into part of the visual order rather than clutter. In the adjacent bathroom, the same dark palette returns against crisp white walls, and geometric black-and-white lines trace energy across the floor while keeping the layout straightforward to use.
The daughter’s room leans into pale pink and creamy white, creating a gentle but not sugary mood for rest and play. Cushions, dolls, and small objects cluster into loose constellations, forming a world that feels secure and personal. Her separate study sharpens the tone: a charcoal desk stands against a white bookcase, punctuated by a small pink lamp that brings a flash of playfulness. Over time, books, drawings, and keepsakes will thicken the shelves, turning this corner into a quiet record of growing up.
Balancing Retreat And Gathering
For the adults, the fourth-floor master suite shifts the register toward subdued comfort and measured privacy. Gray and creamy white ground the bedroom, while an emerald green velvet headboard wraps the sleeping area in a soft visual hush. Decoration is held back so that sensory comfort takes precedence, from the mattress support to the curve of pillows and the hand of the bedding. The result is a room tuned to rest rather than display.
Dual walk-in closets divide and connect the couple’s routines. Her side recalls an intimate boutique, with glass doors and integrated lighting arranging handbags and shoes as clear, readable compositions. His closet relies on darker wood grain and functional zoning, lending a more grounded tone to everyday dressing. A door between the two areas can stay open for shared use or close when independence feels right, keeping a subtle equilibrium between togetherness and solitude.
The master bathroom continues this balance of clarity and comfort. Two vanities support parallel morning rituals, while a bathtub placed by the window draws the eye toward the courtyard outside. Natural stone underfoot, metal fixtures with a firm tactile presence, and planes of glass combine to give bathing a sense of deliberate pause. Every finish supports this quiet ritual without clamoring for attention.
Light, Corridor, And Garden
Below, the basement level shifts to shared leisure and health without losing the house’s considered palette. A professionally tuned home theater concentrates sound and darkness for weekend films, while a billiards table nearby gathers family and friends around easy competition. The fitness area stands against the courtyard, so workouts unfold beside a framed view of planting and sky instead of an enclosed wall. Even underground, daily routines stay linked to movement and nature.
Circulation is treated as more than transit, particularly in the curved foyer and connecting corridor. That gentle curve leads visitors inward, easing the shift from exterior to interior while light filters, reflects, and recomposes across each surface. At the end of this route, the sunroom opens as a bright, quiet volume where function remains intentionally loose, ready for reading, tea, winter sunlight, or listening to rain at night. This room flows into the courtyard, where the family tracks seasons through buds, leaves, snow, and familiar sounds, letting nature and time finish what the interior starts.
In this house, the interior palette and furnishings act less as decoration and more as a framework for shared life. Light, color, and proportion step back once they have done their work, leaving moments of conversation, play, and rest to occupy every level. As years pass and belongings accumulate, the rooms gain density without losing clarity, affirming an early vision in which French elegance quietly adapts to the evolving story of a contemporary family.
Photography by Xueman Hu
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