Tour a Grand Swiss Chalet With a California Attitude

Paola Singer

Mon, March 10, 2025 at 9:00 p.m. GMT+9·6 min read

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Gstaad, the Swiss ski resort favored by Europe’s beau monde, has a distinctively nostalgic Alpine style. Turn your gaze in any direction and you’ll see gingerbread-esque chalets backed by spruces and snowy peaks, like a perfect vintage postcard. So when Jake Arnold’s client, a British businesswoman based in California, had the rare opportunity to build a brand new home just outside of town, she hewed closely to tradition, hiring local architecture firm Chaletbau Matti to create a pitched-roof timber construction that looks as if it had been there for a century.

Inside, however, things aren’t so old-school. To begin with, there’s an elevator that connects the property’s four stories, with a garage on the ground level and common areas at the very top. There’s also a spa and gym, a spacious laundry room, and even air conditioning. “I think she’s the only person [in Gstaad] who has air conditioning,” says the AD100 designer.

The 7,200-square-foot four-story chalet was built using traditional materials and shapes.

Creating a design for a location so steeped in tradition didn’t come easily to Arnold, who left all of that behind when he moved from London to Los Angeles in 2012. Yet true to his nature, he decided to approach it with levity. “The idea of conformity is so difficult for me,” says Arnold. “I still wanted to bring in a certain level of tradition, to respect the culture and the architects, but in a way that felt livable, comfortable, with a bit of California attitude to it.”

He found the desired balance between originality and propriety by pairing antique pieces with custom furniture in flowing silhouettes, and tied it all together with a collection of richly textured fabrics. ”Texture is such a key component to my design sense,“ says Arnold, who can reel off the name, material, and maker of every fabric used in the 7,200-square-foot five-bedroom home. “I think it’s actually one of the things you notice when you’re in one of the spaces that I’ve designed—they’re very tactile.”

Shop out the look of the house here ⤵

Los Angeles–based AD100 designer Jake Arnold’s first major project in Europe took him to Gstaad to design a spruce-walled chalet for a British entrepreneur and her family. In the main living area, on the fourth floor, he created a cozy dining nook using a custom velvet banquette. “I’m a fan of having these types of flexible spaces where it could be both a place to eat, read a book, or work,” says Arnold.

The living room has a sofa by Rose Uniacke with updated classic lines, a 1940s daybed by French designer René Gabriel, Art Deco club chairs, and a vintage coffee table.

In the main common area, which includes a living section and dining section (there is also a more formal dining room next door), he used wool, velvet, silk, linen, mohair, and alpaca. Arnold did most of the shopping in Paris, where he looked for both antique and new pieces, many of which were made to order in a French atelier. One of his favorite finds is a René Gabriel oak daybed from the 1940s, paired with a set of sculptural Art Deco armchairs and a contemporary sofa by Rose Uniacke showing updated classic lines. The palette here, as in much of the home, is rather feminine: beige, taupe, dusty rose, and faded green. “The client has this softness and warmth that we wanted to reflect,” says Arnold. “So we brought some of these elements against the more masculine architecture and the roughness of the wood.”

Formal dinners are served in this dining room, with custom banquette seating, vintage Italian chairs, and a vintage chandelier with tulip glass shades. “I’ve always been obsessed with this Pierre Frey fabric,” says Arnold of the graphic upholstery, in a hue called Rouge de Chine.

This oak-and-leather credenza, from the 1940s, was found at a Paris flea market.

Après ski drinks are prepped here. The home’s interior surfaces are covered in elm and reclaimed oak, to harmonize with the alpine surroundings.

“I love the kind of contrast of this refined silk paper with the rough wood beams,” says Arnold. The biomorphic coffee table is a rare French piece from the 1950s.

As a nod to the vernacular of the surroundings, Arnold stuck to rustic interior surfaces, mostly elm and reclaimed oak planks covering floors and walls. Yet there’s one corner that feels more like Santa Barbara than the Swiss Alps: the family room, or “snug room,” with an umber silk wallpaper, all-over carpeting, and an oversized built-in sectional hugging an amoeba-shaped coffee table. “It took a little bit of convincing,” says Arnold, whose client wanted this to be a “forever vacation home” for her young family. “But this was a small space, and I thought it best to lean into it and make it as cozy and inviting as possible.”

Overall, the designer says he faced little to no resistance, making his European debut as smooth as skiing down Gstaad’s powdery slopes.

Views of the Swiss Alps from a balcony furnished with rattan armchairs.

On the third floor, the primary bedroom features an antique Swedish pine bureau and Art Deco–style Murano glass sconces from the ’90s.

A vintage bamboo vanity and an antique Aesthetic Movement octagonal mirror add old-school charm to this powder room.

Custom twin beds upholstered in burnt sienna velvet. Between them is a vintage wicker nightstand and a set of sconces from Rose Uniacke.

One of the bedrooms on the third floor, with a custom bed upholstered in a silky jacquard from Pierre Frey, flanked by swam-arm sconces from Howe.

A custom banquette and rattan chair from La Redoute on the top-floor balcony of the home, built from the ground up using new and reclaimed spruce by local architecture studio Chaletbau Matti.