An Athens apartment renovation built around a Bacchus floor mosaic

Some renovations start with a mood board; this one started with the floor. At the entrance to the living room of a 100-square-metre flat on Fokionos Negri street, in Athens's Kypseli neighbourhood, sits a mosaic of Bacchus, or Dionysus. Local studio Space is around us restored it and then borrowed its yellows for everything else, in a focused redesign of the kitchen and bathroom.

In the kitchen, a single run of fitted cabinetry fills the main wall, finished in a butter-yellow sampled from the mosaic and ending in triangular open shelves that ease the awkward floor plan towards the existing pantry. The worktops are Dionysus marble, a stone the studio notes was common in 1960s Athenian flats. Opposite stands a custom terracotta dining table with rounded corners and two oversized cylindrical legs, and vintage lights nod to mid-century Athens.

Large yellow terrazzo tiles replace the old grey floor and carry on down the hallway into the windowless bathroom, where glossy lime-yellow and white tiles bounce light from an internal air shaft, alongside a rounded mirror, a terracotta sconce and tiled shower niches.

It's a private home, sent to designboom through its reader submissions, so there's nothing to visit. But it's a lovely lesson in letting one old detail set the tone for a whole flat.

Our summary of a story from designboom, published 23 October 2026. Read the original

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