A two-hour conversation on the 16th of April 2026 in a converted farmhouse studio outside Apt, with a Provence-based villa designer whose practice has completed roughly 60 villa interiors across Provence, Mallorca, Puglia, and the Aegean between 2008 and 2026. In October 2022 she pulled local limestone from her standard floor specification across her entire studio. The decision followed the summer of 2022, when Provence held above 38 Celsius for 11 consecutive days in mid-July, and six villa floors she had specified between 2017 and 2020 cracked at the expansion joints. The cost of the repair averaged 220 euros per square metre. Three of the six villas required full replacement at closer to 380 euros per square metre. She walks us through the decision, the four materials she now uses instead, and the one project she is still arguing with the owner about.
By The Villas For Kings desk
The designer has asked us to mark her. Her practice is six people, based outside Apt in the Luberon, with a satellite studio in Palma she opened in 2019. Roughly 35 percent of her work is in Provence, 25 percent in Mallorca, 20 percent in Puglia, and the balance in the Aegean and on the Côte d'Azur. The 2022 stone decision applies across the whole portfolio. It is, in her words, the largest single specification change she has made in 18 years of practice.
The piece is in three parts: the 2022 failure, the four materials she runs now, and the argument she has not yet won.
"The 2022 summer was the inflection. Provence sat above 38 Celsius from the 12th of July to the 22nd of July. Mid-July is the rental peak. The villas were occupied. The floors I had specified between 2017 and 2020 ran local limestone on a standard sand-and-cement screed with conventional expansion joints. The expansion-joint spec assumed a continental Mediterranean envelope that had not seen 11 consecutive days at that temperature in modern record."
"The cracks appeared in mid-August across six villas. They were not hairline. Three of the six had visible separation at the joints, lifting the limestone by two to four millimetres at the worst point. Two had cracked through the stone itself, perpendicular to the longest run. One had a floor panel rocking under foot. The renter saw it. The owner called me."
"The repair on the lifted joints averaged 220 euros per square metre, including the underlying screed correction. The three full replacements ran closer to 380 euros per square metre. Two of the six owners had to refund partial weeks. One had to relocate the renter to a neighbouring villa for the second week of August. The total cost across the six properties, including the relocation and the partial refunds, was somewhere over 380,000 euros. The cost was carried by the owners. The reputational cost was carried by me."
"The investigation took roughly four months. The conclusion was that the thermal stress at sustained 38 Celsius and above was larger than the expansion-joint spec accommodated. The fix was not a better expansion joint. The fix was a different material. I pulled limestone from my standard floor spec in October 2022 and have not put it back."
"Four materials cover roughly 80 percent of the work I would previously have done in limestone. The decision on which of the four depends on the room and the traffic."
"First, lime-mortared large-format porcelain for high-traffic ground floors. Porcelain has the dimensional stability that natural limestone does not. The 1200 by 600 millimetre format reads as stone at three metres. The price is roughly 90 euros per square metre supplied, plus 35 euros per square metre laid. The renter walking through the entry does not see the difference. The owner does not pay for the repair in year five."
"Second, oiled wide-board oak for living areas and bedrooms. Oak is more forgiving on thermal envelope and warmer underfoot in the shoulder months. The 220 millimetre board at roughly 130 euros per square metre supplied is now my default for everything above ground level."
"Third, polished concrete for service zones, plant rooms, and gym floors. The polished concrete absorbs heat without cracking and tolerates the daily traffic of staff and equipment. The 2026 cost is roughly 110 euros per square metre installed."
"Fourth, reclaimed terracotta for outdoor terraces, where the patina is the design point and the heat envelope is bounded by the open air. The 280 to 380 euro per square metre supplied figure for the better reclaimed sources is higher than the lime-mortared porcelain but the result is correct for the location. Modern factory terracotta does not have the same density and cracks within five summers in my experience."
"My decision was against limestone as a continuous structural floor. The decision was not against stone as a material. I still specify stone in three places. Decorative wall cladding, where the stone is not under thermal load. Fireplace surrounds, where the stone is bounded and the panel size is small. And outdoor seat-wall caps and pool-edge coping, where the stone tolerates the partial-shade thermal envelope without continuous load."
"I also still use marble for kitchen and bathroom counters, with the basalt or honed-stone caveat my Athens-based colleague would add. The counter is bounded, the joint spec is smaller, and the failure mode is staining, not cracking. The decision tree is different."
"I am working on a Puglia masseria for an owner who insists on the local pietra leccese on the main ground-floor run. The pietra leccese has a different mineralogy from the Provence limestone and a higher porosity. My modelling says it will fail under the same thermal load that broke the six Provence floors. The owner does not agree. The owner's reference is a 1920s masseria in the same region that has held the same floor for 100 years. My counter is that the 1920s masseria was not occupied through 12 consecutive days of 40 Celsius in 2024. The thermal record is different now."
"The compromise we are working toward is a smaller panel size, tighter expansion joints, and a higher-tolerance screed. The compromise reduces but does not eliminate the risk. I have asked the owner to budget 80,000 euros for a year-five floor replacement if the compromise does not hold. The owner has agreed in principle. The conversation is not closed."
"The argument matters because the owner-designer relationship runs on a 20-year timeline. The floor I specify in 2026 is the floor the renter walks on in 2036. The thermal record between 2026 and 2036 is the variable I am specifying against. The 2017 to 2020 cohort of designers, including me, specified against a thermal record we no longer have. The 2026 specification has to assume the 2022 envelope is the new normal, not the outlier."
"Look at the floor on any villa that quotes a 2017 to 2020 build date and a Mediterranean inland location. If the floor is local limestone, ask the owner when it was last repaired or replaced. Three answers are acceptable. The floor was replaced after 2022 with a different material. The floor was inspected and the expansion joint redone. The floor has held without incident through the 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025 summers and is documented. Any other answer is a floor problem you cannot see in the listing photographs."
"The villa I built in 2024 and 2025 will not have this conversation. The villa I built in 2018 and earlier might."
Our coverage of the architect of the Mykonos stone house walks the parallel structural question on Cycladic dry-stone walls. Our work on the best villas in Puglia ranks the resulting market. The 2022 floor cohort is documented at the destination level on our Provence destination guide.
Why did she stop using local limestone? The 2022 Provence heatwave broke six villa floors at the expansion joints. The repair averaged 220 euros per square metre, three replacements ran closer to 380 euros per square metre. She pulled limestone from her standard spec in October 2022.
What does she specify instead? Lime-mortared porcelain for high-traffic ground floors, oiled wide-board oak for living areas, polished concrete for service zones, and reclaimed terracotta for outdoor terraces.
Is it aesthetic or operational? Operational. The aesthetic of limestone is correct. The performance under the new summer temperature ceiling is the problem.
Where will she still use stone? Decorative wall cladding, fireplace surrounds, and outdoor seat-wall caps. Not as continuous structural floor.
What does this mean for the renter? Check the floor on any 2017 to 2020 villa in Mediterranean inland locations. Ask when the floor was last repaired or replaced.
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Last updated 2026-03. We have not adjusted our editorial for the commission rate. See how-we-make-money for the full disclosure.