DEEP COLOR || How Paolo Frello & Partners Turned 1970s Club Culture Into a Milan Interior Design Masterclass
There is a particular kind of confidence required to furnish a home with Soriana sofas, a floor-to-ceiling bookcase wall, and a neon "Cocktails" sign, and have it read as considered rather than costumed.
Paolo Frello & Partners pulled it off in a 160-square-metre Milan apartment where the 1970s serve not as a mood board, but as a design philosophy.
The project sits within a post-war building designed by Asnago Vender in Milan's Arena district. The original 1950s layout had already been compromised by a later renovation, so Frello's team started from scratch: fragmentary rooms gave way to a fluid, hierarchical spatial system organized around a new circular core. That core acts as a hinge between the living and sleeping areas, with dark brushed-oak herringbone flooring running continuously throughout to anchor the whole space. The clients are a couple with a passion for entertaining and for the club-inspired interiors of the 1970s. Frello honoured that brief without flinching.
In the living area, the brief finds its fullest expression. A bespoke concave bookcase dominates an entire wall, packed floor to ceiling with books and objects: a Gio Ponti monograph on the coffee table, a vintage Italy travel guide beside it, hat signal a life actively lived among ideas. Two Soriana sofas by Cassina face each other across a custom coffee table in black lacquer and smoked glass. A neon "Cocktails" sign glows from a corner shelf. A large figurative painting commands the adjacent wall. The room reads like a private club whose membership criteria are curiosity and good taste.
Above: A large figurative painting anchors the living room wall opposite the bookcase, its narrative scale in deliberate dialogue with the Soriana sofas beneath. Below right: The built-in bar cabinet, its bottles reflected in a backdrop of vertical glass rods, is the apartment's most theatrical aside, keeping with its character.
The material language deepens through the apartment's chromatic sequencing. A saturated, almost nocturnal blue envelops the kitchen and dining zone, where a monolithic stainless steel Euromobil kitchen reflects light like an installation rather than a domestic fixture. Near the entrance, a bespoke metal storage element with curved fluted glass tubes fuses lighting and wardrobe functions into a single luminous column—the first signal that every element here does more than one job.
The monolithic Euromobil kitchen in stainless steel becomes a reflective surface within the saturated blue volume, functioning more like a sculpture than a fitted fixture.
The bespoke entrance column in metal and curved fluted glass collapses the boundary between lighting, storage, and architecture into a single glowing object.
The sleeping areas translate that ambition into something more intimate. Built-in wardrobes upholstered in fabric panels warm the bedroom walls, their patterned fronts opening to reveal a fully fitted walk-in wardrobe beyond. A mirrored sliding door expands the spatial perception while concealing the threshold. The colour palette shifts here: dusty lilac walls, a deep blue upholstered headboard, linen bedding in muted grey-purple. It is quieter than the living spaces, but no less deliberate.
Fabric-panelled wardrobes frame an open walk-in wardrobe beyond, the geometric textile pattern providing warmth and depth within the bedroom's burgundy-toned atmosphere. Below left: Spherical sconces line the curved green-toned corridor wall, marking the circular core that reorganizes movement through the apartment.
The bathrooms are where Frello's chromatic confidence reaches its most concentrated form. The "masculine" bathroom pairs dramatic dark tiles with a warm honey-toned marble surround framing a deep blue shower; the "feminine" bathroom answers with teal stacked tiles, a curved burgundy vanity unit, and a veined marble countertop. A guest bathroom wraps itself entirely in oriental wallpaper by Jannelli & Volpi, its deep-red botanical landscape curving around the room like a painted fever dream.
Above: The masculine bathroom details: A honey-toned marble arch frames the entrance to the shower, where terracotta finger tiles meet deep navy walls in an unexpectedly harmonious collision of warm and cool. Below: The feminine bathroom details: A curved burgundy vanity unit, and stacked teal tiles in the shower rise floor to ceiling around the bathtub niche.
The guest bathroom's botanical wallpaper by Jannelli & Volpi wraps the curved walls in a landscape of crimson trees and birds, turning a utilitarian room into an immersive environment.
Throughout, the 1970s reference operates as Frello intended: not as nostalgia but as ergonomic language. The forms are generous, the colours saturated, the craftsmanship unapologetically present. This is an apartment that knows exactly what it is, and wears it without apology.
PROJECT DETAILS
Project: Deep Color
Location: Arena District, Milan, Italy
Designer: Paolo Frello & Partners
Photography: Courtesy of Paolo Frello & Partners
