13 Aug 2026Höllviken, Sweden

The Black Villa on the Peninsula.

At the southern tip of Sweden, on the Falsterbo peninsula, pine forest thins into sand and the light carries the sea in every direction. This is Höllviken, here, Linda and Aleks have built a black timber villa drawn by architect Klas Sjöstrand, a house designed not around how it should look, but around how a family actually lives.

The black timber villa in Höllviken, its deck arranged as a series of outdoor rooms.

Designed from the inside out

The plot came first, bought almost on impulse. Linda and Aleks began, as most do, with catalogue houses and turnkey solutions, and found themselves wanting to change nearly everything they saw. So they decided to draw their own. They met architect Klas Sjöstrand in September 2021. By February 2022, the building permit was submitted. In six months, they had worked out a house that felt entirely theirs.

The first brief never mentioned facades or materials. Linda drew how the family would move through the house during an ordinary day. The laundry moved away from the kitchen to sit beside the bedroom and walk-in closet, where laundry actually begins. The kitchen gained a proper pantry instead. The dining area was given a lower ceiling than the living room. Meals should feel warm and intimate, while the living room keeps its volume, its fireplace, and its wall of glass toward the garden.

Diana dining table with Signe chairs on the covered terrace.

Detail of the Bazo sun lounger with raised backrest and bolster cushion in beige bouclé, beside a teak slat table with a carafe and a bowl of peaches.

Bazo sun lounger. Shown in detail.

Algot lounge table in teak, warmed by the afternoon sun.

"The furniture is almost a natural continuation of the architecture. The outdoor spaces become rooms of their own."

- Linda

The garden facade. The garden was never meant to begin outside the house.

The work that took the longest is the work you never see. In the bathrooms, every trim, tile joint and edge was turned over until the lines ran clean. The garden's irrigation was planned into the ground, so no hose ever crosses a path or a terrace. A laundry chute drops from the upper floor straight into the sorting room below, a small idea developed together with the architect that has become one of the most appreciated functions in the house. And the pantry, of all rooms, proved the hardest to resolve: a limited footprint that demanded countless hours, and was not truly finished until 2026.

The large glazed openings were a starting point, never an afterthought. The garden was not meant to begin outside the house. Nature should be present from the sofa and the dining table, and the shifting seasons allowed to become part of the home.

Signe chairs beneath the pergola, where the light draws its own pattern.

Diana dining table with a Sabbia Dekton top. Shown in detail.

The dining terrace. Diana dekton table with Signe chairs in teak and oat cushion

"We have worked hard to create different rooms in the garden, places for dinner, for rest and for spending time together. There should be a sense of harmony as you move between them."

- Linda & Aleks

Linda found by Crea through a friend who spoke warmly of the furniture, and fell for the design language at first sight, modern and pared back, yet warm and timeless. The garden is arranged as a series of rooms, one for dinners, one for rest, one for gathering, and the furniture was chosen to carry the architecture between them. The Diana table and Signe chairs hold the dining terrace. Bazo sun loungers follow the sun across the deck. The Arvid lounge collection gathers the evening.

For Linda and Aleks, a piece of furniture that will still stand in twenty years comes down to three things: quality, durability and timeless design. Materials that age beautifully in a Nordic climate. Cushions that can take a summer rain without being rescued. And a form you never tire of. Fewer pieces, chosen better, rather than replaced every five years.