Listening to Mallorcan architecture and a Balearic Way of Living

There are some places that just manage to slow you down. For me, I found that my home for the past week in Mallorca was one of those. The local area doesn’t rush to impress. There’s no grandeur for grandeur’s sake. Just stone. Light. Heat. Linens. The deep stillness of the siesta hour. The gentle rhythm of shutters opening in the morning and closing again before the sun’s glare sharpens.

It’s easy to see why people usually speak of the Balearics with a deeply personal tone. The pace, or lack of it, leaves a lot of room for those still moments that you hold on to. All whilst maintaining that sense of freedom to switch things up and lean into the social spontaneity that comes from a tequila in the sun with strangers.

And while I returned with the usual photographs - courtyards, stone buildings, olive trees, old intricate timber doors - I  also returned with a quiet ache to bring more of that way of living home with me. Not by copying out of context, but by allowing myself to listen to how certain designed moments made me feel.

This is not a guide to Mallorcan design, but merely my soft reflection on it. And how these thoughts - subtle as they are - might find their place in our homes, gardens, and days.

1. Materiality That Grounds You

As an architect, what caught me first wasn’t the buildings themselves, but the weight of them. The way a wall can feel cool at 11am and still radiate warmth at dusk. The way everything seemed to be made of the island - limestone, clay, limewash, iron, wood.

Walls are thick. Windows are few. Floors are stone or old, uneven terracotta - often worn smooth by years of bare feet. Ceilings, when they aren’t beamed, are bowed with old plaster or reed matting, their imperfections working with them. Everything breathes.

Embrace raw, textural materials: unsealed stone, aged wood, lime plaster, wrought iron. Let them be what they are. Consider the mass of something over decoration. A thick wall. A solid basin. A bench carved from one material. Allow the weight to speak. Play with chalky softness on walls to bring a natural warmth - light-responsive and never flat.

2. Shade Is Sacred

There’s a reverence for shade here. A kind of architecture of absence. A stone archway that throws a perfect shadow at midday. A cluster of grapevines forming a natural canopy. A shutter angled just right. Shade becomes its own functional room.

Life is organised around heat - how to embrace it, how to avoid it. Which means homes should be built not to just showcase the sun, but to filter it. To soften its edges and curate the perfect environments for ourselves.

Think about where light lands, not just where it enters. As with colour, let your space offer pockets of calm and dimness, not just brightness. Consider linen curtains, exterior shutters, pergolas, canopies. Anything that moves gently with wind or light. In gardens, try filtering light with plants - olive trees, vines, or tall grasses with feathery silhouettes.

3. The Garden Isn’t Separate

In many homes I visited, you wouldn’t call it a “garden” in the archetypal British sense. There’s little direct manicuring. No sharp divisions. Instead, nature is allowed to creep in - wild fennel at the edge of a terrace, rosemary spilling through stone steps, cactus growing through generations. It’s less about arranging nature, more about coexisting with it appropriately. Paths are often a little dusty. Seating is carved from stone or old timber. And the line between indoors and out is rarely obvious - just a low lintel, or an open arch, or a breeze that carries scent from one room to the next.

Blur the edges between indoors and out. Keep doors open. Let scent and air flow between spaces. Design outdoor spaces to be used daily, not just for occasions or the one sunny day of the year. A small table shaded by a fig tree. A bench by a lavender bush. Don’t over-style the garden. Let native plants take the lead and work with them.

4. Simplicity is Sensual

The beauty in Mallorcan homes isn’t in their abundance of furnishings - it’s in how little is actually there. A table that doubles as the desk. A linen curtain that moves with the breeze. The way a room smells faintly of stone and wood.

This simplicity isn’t austere. It’s warm. It’s full of tactility - cool ceramics, rough-woven baskets, cotton, glass, old brass. Nothing glossy. Nothing loud. Just materials that feel alive, and appropriate furniture that asks to be touched.

Pare back - but not to minimalism. Just edit with care. Let each object earn its place. Choose natural finishes where possible: handmade pottery, linen, unvarnished wood, tarnished metals. Design for the senses - how things feel underfoot, what catches light, what catches scent.

5. Time as a Design Principle

Perhaps my favourite thing was how bedrooms seemed to hold time differently. They didn’t demand to be used in a certain regimented way. They welcomed slow mornings and afternoon naps with the same ease. They weren’t “designed” for one purpose in the sense we so often see now - they were spaces for genuine rest, not just night time sleep.

Allow your home to evolve. Leave space for new pieces to arrive slowly. Let old ones stay if they still serve a purpose to you, even when they’re imperfect. Don’t rush to finish a space. Let it feel unfinished if that means it’s still becoming. Consider how your home changes over the course of the day - where light falls at 7am, where shadows pool at dusk. Arrange rooms around those moments.

6. A Way of Life, Not Just A Style

To live like Mallorca isn’t just to decorate like it. It’s to value slowness. To cook for yourself properly. To sit outside as the day cools. To care about texture, not trend. To eat under trees and warm light, not pale LEDs. To let music echo off the walls of a living home while everyone moves lazily between the kitchen and the garden.

To me, this feels like a way to have a softer approach to the sense of a home. A desire to design in a way that makes time stretch, rather than rush.

Build the rituals into your home that you would on holiday. Morning coffee outside. A shaded reading spot. Dinners that last long after sunset. Let emotion guide decisions as much as aesthetics. What makes you feel calm, comforted, unhurried? Don’t aim to recreate anything you see exactly -  Let the inspiration remind you of what matters, and then slowly curate your own personalised place to rest.

Final Thought

We should return to those ‘holiday’ moments often. Think about how the air felt, how long the shadows grew, how still the houses sat amongst the weight of summer. I try, in quiet ways, to fold a little of that stillness into my own spaces. Not by imitating what I saw, but by remembering how it felt to be there. That’s the thing about good design. It lingers. Not in objects, but in atmosphere.

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