An interior designer's vibrant, empowering house on the Portuguese coast

This is a house with good vibes,’ declares the Portuguese interior designer Gracinha Viterbo. Bright, light and buzzing with positive energy, the modern villa in Estoril, on the northern coast of Lisbon, radiates the kind of upbeat atmosphere that you would expect of a sun-drenched holiday retreat – except it is now a permanent family home.

An ardent believer in the power of design to uplift and enhance our lives, Gracinha practises what she preaches in the lateral, six-bedroomed space, which – aside from a study and a cinema room – spans an expansive single floor. Named Saravá after the Brazilian expression meaning welcome, it is shared with her husband and business partner, Miguel Vieira da Rocha, their four teenage children (Santiago, 17, Gui, 15, Benjamim, 14, and Alice, 12), two dogs (Gatsby and Zov) and Mia the macaw. It acts, she says, as a vibrant ‘creative laboratory’ for her empowering aesthetic.

Built by Miguel’s French grandmother in the Eighties, its maze-like architecture was inspired by the decade she spent in Morocco before moving to Portugal. When the couple bought the house from Miguel’s uncle, who had inherited it after her death, in 2005 – three years before taking the helm at the family firm Viterbo Interior Design – it marked the start of a seismic transformation, the scale of which took them by surprise. ‘It’s a project that grew and grew,’ says Gracinha. ‘At first, we thought we’d just take down a few walls. But, in the end, only a few walls remained.’ Though keen to preserve the original, labyrinthine spirit, over a period of 18 months, Gracinha reconfigured the layout, upgrading the plumbing and electrics in an effort to answer the evolving needs of their young – and, at the time, fast expanding – family.

After relocating the bedrooms to sit together on one side of the house, Gracinha worked on expanding the kitchen and seating areas, forming two separate sitting rooms, linked by a doublesided fireplace, as well as enlarging the windows throughout to seamlessly blend the outside with the light-filled interior.

While much of the design is marked by an airy, open-plan dynamic, she opted for a more contained and enveloping mode in the dining room. Spilling out onto the terrace where a fire pit burns year round, it remains one of the most hard-working parts of the house some 15 years after the renovation was completed. Decorated in a richly evocative ikat-patterned wallpaper, this statement-making space has the air of an eccentric academic’s study. The recently installed bespoke bookcases are filled with finds gathered on Gracinha and Miguel’s travels while they were involved in residential and hotel projects from Singapore and Málaga to London. It is in this room that the couple work when not at their Lisbon studio and store (aptly named the Cabinet of Curiosities), the children do their homework, and the family eats together and frequently entertains.

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‘We love hosting and the intimacy of being around the table,’ Gracinha says of the room’s deliberately cosy proportions. At its centre is a smooth-contoured dining table crafted from a single piece of oak, partnered with a series of chairs, each one hand embroidered with words naming particular psychological states. Created by its in-house studio artisans, these are typical of Viterbo Interior Design’s beautifully crafted, conversation-sparking pieces. ‘It’s fun and often surprising to see where people choose to sit for dinner,’ Gracinha says, explaining guests can play musical chairs between the ‘inspired’, ‘wild’ or ‘wise’ seats.

The same wonderfully playful mentality permeates every aspect of the interior, which, in the spring of 2020, entered something of a second act. Normally too preoccupied with her clients’ needs to assess her own, Gracinha began looking again at the house during lockdown. After canvassing her family’s opinion, she started turning up the dial, replacing the all-pervading soft grey palette with something more serotonin-boosting. ‘Everything was so gloomy in the world,’ she says. ‘I felt that I needed to bring in some brightness and colour.’ What began with the saturated tones of Farrow & Ball’s ‘Yellowcake’ in the entrance hall soon spiralled to include blasts of its ‘Fowler Pink’, terracotta ‘Terre D’Egypte’ and olive green ‘Bancha’. This has culminated in the colour-block collage that makes a statement in the stairwell – and a series of exuberant prints in the bedrooms.

‘Design has to elevate the mood,’ enthuses Gracinha, who is propelled by the notion that every space should have its own personality. ‘It’s colour that gives a room energy.’ Describing her taste as ‘chameleonic’, she sees her role as interpreting people’s lives through design – whether for herself or for her clients.

She credits her eclectic approach to the time she spent living in London in the Nineties, where she studied at the Chelsea College of Art and Design and Inchbald School of Design, and worked for Kelly Hoppen as a junior designer, before she joined the company her mother, Graça, founded in 1971. ‘My mother had a signature style,’ she says. ‘But I don’t – I love adapting to clients and constantly creating different moods and ideas.’ It is a holistic, multifarious approach that comes to life in her adventurous, no-holds-barred home, with its overriding spirit of warmth and inclusivity. ‘It’s a collector’s house,’ she says with a smile. ‘Like our lives, it’s made up of many layers, moments and memories.’ And at Saravá all are welcome.

Viterbo Interior Design: viterbointeriordesign.com