A four-hour conversation on the 8th of March 2026 in a studio above the Jardin Alpin in Courchevel 1850, with a designer who has spent 19 years drawing chalets in the upper Trois Vallees. His practice has logged 22 completed new builds and 14 major refits since 2007. Roughly 14 of those 36 projects were for Russian-passport clients between 2007 and 2022. None of the 11 projects we have signed since 2022 have been for a Russian-passport client. The buyer base has shifted: Indian family offices, Gulf principals, established French and Swiss money returning to the resort, and a small American thread. The brief has shifted with it. The same designer who specified Chalet La Datcha-grade gilding and fur drapery in 2014 is, in 2026, specifying lighter cedar, warmer stone, and a kosher and halal kitchen line. What follows is the playbook.
By The Villas For Kings desk
The Russian pull-back from the upper Courchevel market was the largest single demographic shift the resort has absorbed since the original Russian wave arrived in the late 1990s. Sanctions, the freezing of named assets, and the closure of direct Moscow and St Petersburg flights to Chambery and Geneva together reduced the active Russian-passport buyer base by roughly 38 percent between 2022 and 2025, against the 2014 to 2021 baseline. Several trophy chalets, including the documented 938 square metre Chalet La Datcha built by Oleg Tinkov, have either changed hands or been quietly removed from active rental availability. The resort did not collapse. The buyer mix turned over.
The designer we interviewed has asked us to mark him and his practice until our autumn 2026 follow-up. He works in the same upper-1850 register as the operators behind the Cimalpes, Leo Trippi, Art de Vivre, and Lily of the Valley brokerages whose books cover the resort. He has refit two chalets in the past 18 months whose previous owners were sanctioned in 2022 and whose current owners came in from Mumbai and Riyadh.
What follows is the playbook: the four rules of the upper Courchevel build, the three signature moves the new buyer brief has rewritten, and the single specification renters should ask for in 2026.
"The first rule is the PLU, the plan local d'urbanisme, which is the Saint-Bon-Tarentaise commune's local planning code. The PLU caps building height in the 1850 village at 11 metres above natural ground level and caps the footprint as a function of the plot area. The cap is enforced. The mayor's office signs every permit personally. A trophy chalet of 1,200 to 1,800 square metres of usable floor area has, in roughly nine cases out of ten, more than half of its programme below the ground line. The basement is again the architecture, as it is in Aspen and as it is on the Amalfi Coast."
"The 1850 basement is, however, a different basement from the Aspen one. The water table at 1,850 metres is permafrost-adjacent in late winter. The structural cost of a fully dry, fully heated basement is 22 to 38 percent higher than the equivalent build at a low-elevation site. The owner who has not been warned about the cost is, on every project I have heard about, the owner whose project goes over budget."
"The renter walking a 1,400 square metre 1850 chalet is, by definition, walking a chalet whose visible above-ground volume is roughly 580 square metres. The rest is in the hill. The basement programme is where the cinema, the wine cellar, the spa, the pool, the staff bedrooms, and the second kitchen sit. The chalet that has under-invested in the basement is the chalet whose value lives entirely in the photographs of the principal floor."
"The PLU requires reclaimed Alpine timber and locally quarried stone on the visible exterior. The acceptable wood is mostly 100 to 250-year-old larch, spruce, and pine recovered from dismantled barns in the Tarentaise, the Maurienne, and across the Italian border in the Val d'Aosta. The acceptable stone is principally pierre de Savoie or pierre de Maurienne, dressed by local masons. The hand-cut shingle on the principal roof is a separate trade altogether."
"The Russian-era build sometimes treated this register as a starting point and then layered in gilded interior treatments. The post-2022 build is reading the register differently. The Indian and Gulf brief asks for the same reclaimed wood but in lighter washes, less smoke-stained, and more even. The interior gilding has dropped. The interior brass and bronze has stayed. The cashmere-and-wool fabric programme has stayed. The fur has, in the last 11 projects, dropped to roughly a third of its 2014 levels."
"The buyer reading the post-2022 chalet aesthetic should know that the building shell has not changed. The interior has. The chalet photographed in 2014 with a black-fur sofa, gilded chandelier, and a marble bar is the chalet photographed in 2026 with a cream wool sofa, a hand-blown smoked-glass chandelier, and a smoked-oak bar. Same shell. Different living room. Different owner."
"The 1850 rental market grades a chalet on its ski-in ski-out access in four tiers. Tier one is a slope-side door with the boot-out within 11 to 14 metres of the door. Tier two is a 50 to 90 metre walk on a heated path or a private snowcat track. Tier three is a 150 to 300 metre walk including a public chairlift run. Tier four is a chalet inside the village that needs a vehicle transfer to the slope. The rental price band at 1850 between tier one and tier four can be 220 to 340 percent."
"The honest broker tells the renter which tier the chalet sits in. The dishonest broker calls every chalet ski-in ski-out. We have walked four chalets in the past three years marketed as ski-in ski-out where the actual door-to-piste distance was above 300 metres. The marketing was wrong. The renter found out on arrival. The platform refused to refund."
"The post-2022 buyer is generally more careful on this question than the Russian-era buyer was. The Russian buyer often bought for status more than for ski access. The Indian and Gulf buyer is often a less aggressive skier and more focused on the spa programme, the food programme, and the children's ski school logistics. The slope-side door matters less. The 3pm to 8pm programme matters more."
"The fourth rule is new. The post-2022 brief has, in roughly half of our 11 recent projects, asked for a two-line kitchen capable of running a kosher service for one client base and a halal service for another. The two lines are physically separated. Each has its own sink, refrigerator, dishwasher, and dedicated stove zone. The interior architecture has to absorb the doubling without the chalet reading as a hotel."
"The kitchen footprint required is roughly 65 to 110 square metres rather than the 28 to 45 square metres a Russian-era chalet typically allocated. The architectural challenge is to keep the principal living rooms open while the kitchen footprint grows. We solve the problem by placing the second line on the basement level, with a dumbwaiter and a service stair connecting the two. The renter does not see the second kitchen. The chef and the household staff use it for full holiday service."
"The chalet that has not been designed for the dual line is the chalet whose 2026 rental conversion will be hard. The Russian-era kitchen was tight. The new buyer base wants generous. The retrofit is a 700,000 to 1.4 million euro project. The owner who is debating whether to do the retrofit is the owner who, in our view, should. Our work on the Courchevel 1850 2026 to 2027 rate map indicates which chalets in the rental book have already absorbed the upgrade."
"The first signature move of the post-2022 brief is the spa programme as a full second basement floor rather than a 60 to 90 square metre tucked-in suite. The new spa is 220 to 380 square metres and includes a 14 to 18 metre lap pool, a separate plunge, a hammam, a wood sauna, a snow shower, a treatment room with two beds, a tea pavilion, and a ski-fitness room with a treadmill and resistance bench."
"The cost of the new spa programme is 1.2 to 2.6 million euros above the older suite. The depreciation rate of the spa equipment is roughly six years on the heated equipment and 11 to 14 years on the structural finishes. The owner who has not budgeted for the cyclical replacement is the owner whose chalet looks tired by year seven. We have walked two chalets in the past 18 months where exactly that has happened. The owner did the original build and skipped the maintenance reserve."
"The second signature move is the cinema as a primary social room. The Russian-era cinema was often a trophy room used roughly twice a season. The post-2022 cinema is used most nights of the rental week. The new brief asks for 14 to 22 seats, a 4K to 8K projector, a Dolby Atmos audio fit, and an attached bar with hot-water and cold-water service so a 90-minute screening can be turned around without staff entering the principal floor."
"The cinema is now a second living room with a screen. The architecture moves accordingly. The room is wider and lower than the older cinema box. The seats face slightly off-axis from the screen so that a side conversation does not block the view. The bar is at the back of the room, not at the side. The lighting is dimmable in three independent zones. The acoustics are tuned by a Paris-based studio."
"The third signature move is the dedicated staff hub on the village-side wing of the chalet. The hub has a kitchen for staff meals, a laundry, a uniform locker room, a single-bed sleep room for night staff, and a dedicated service entrance. The hub keeps the staff cycle entirely separate from the renter cycle. The principal floor is left to the guests. The basement is left to the spa. The village-side wing is the working machine room of the chalet."
"The Indian and Gulf brief has, by 2026, almost universally asked for this hub. The Russian-era brief funded the housekeeping and the chef but rarely funded the dedicated hub. The new chalets feel different to live in. The staff feels different to work in. The retention rate of household staff in chalets with the hub runs roughly 30 to 50 percent higher than in chalets without it. Our work on the villa manager job described walks the same staff-retention question from the operations side."
"Three. Snow cover is the first. The natural snowfall trajectory at 1,850 metres has shortened the reliable snow window by roughly 18 to 26 days over the past two decades. The resort has expanded snowmaking and has held the season largely in place, but the cost has shifted to the chalet rental rate. The chalet at 1,750 metres facing south is the chalet whose own snow line in front of the principal terrace becomes patchy by mid-March. The architect's job in 2026 is to design the terrace as an outdoor living programme that works without snow in front of it. The Russian-era terrace assumed snow."
"Air access is the second. The closure of the Chambery winter long-haul programme has consolidated the Indian and Gulf arrival traffic through Geneva and increased the road transfer to 2.5 to 4 hours depending on weather. The new buyer has accepted the transfer. The architectural impact is that the chalet has to absorb the arrival experience. The arrival hall, the boot room, the welcome bar, and the staff greeting routine are now the first 11 minutes of the holiday. The chalet that handles the first 11 minutes badly loses the week."
"The third is the energy and altitude code. The French RE2020 energy regulation lands more heavily on altitude builds because of the heating load. The cost of a code-compliant envelope at 1,850 metres has risen 14 to 22 percent in three years. The owner who has not budgeted for it is the owner whose project will overrun by a winter."
"One specification. The kitchen footprint in square metres and whether a second line for kosher or halal service is on the floor plan. Two numbers, one drawing. The chalet that has the second line is the chalet that has absorbed the post-2022 buyer reality. The chalet that has not is the chalet still designed for a 2014 client base. The renter who needs the second line gets the answer in 24 hours. The renter who does not need it has still learned which chalet is currently aligned with the market. The chalet that has not retrofit is the chalet whose rental price will, in our view, come under pressure within two seasons."
The specification is, in his framing, the single best indicator of whether the owner has read the post-2022 brief. The owners who have, are the owners whose chalets are still booked through Christmas week. The owners who have not, are the owners whose December weeks are looking for renters in early November. Our work on the best chalets in Courchevel ranks against the indicator. Our work on the Courchevel destination guide walks the wider buyer question.
How much of the Russian buyer base has the resort lost? Roughly 38 percent of the active 2014 to 2021 baseline by 2025, on the designer's count consistent with broker-side estimates.
Who is replacing them? Indian family offices, Gulf principals, established French and Swiss money, and a smaller American thread. The post-2022 buyer is more wellness-focused and more food-focused than the Russian-era buyer.
What is the height cap on a chalet at 1850? 11 metres above natural ground level under the Saint-Bon-Tarentaise PLU. Most trophy programmes go below ground rather than above.
What materials are accepted? Reclaimed Alpine larch, spruce, and pine, mostly 100 to 250 years old. Pierre de Savoie or pierre de Maurienne for stone. Hand-cut shingle for the principal roof.
What is the buyer's filter question? The kitchen footprint in square metres and the presence of a second kosher or halal service line. The answer separates a 2026-current chalet from a 2014 holdover.
Our sister sites cover the hotels, restaurants, and bars our chalet bookers ask about most often.
One email a week. Designer interviews, planning intelligence, and the chalets we pass on. Subscribe to the buyer’s brief.
Last updated 2026-04. We have not adjusted our editorial for the commission rate. See how-we-make-money for the full disclosure.