Warning: This Stunning Peruvian Beach House Will Spark Some SERIOUS Vacation FOMO
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When Bettina Lolas hosts a big lunch at her open-air home in the Peruvian beach town of Pulpos, the gathering’s bound to turn into a bigger party. From the terrace, visitors—perched atop a Syrian daybed, Moroccan poufs, or rattan wingback chairs—enjoy breathtaking views of the Pacific Ocean, not to mention Lolas’s hospitality.
Fortunately, overstaying one’s welcome is what the home’s decor is all about, according to Venezuelan-born designer Carlos Mota, with whom Lolas has designed several homes. All that outdoor furniture, for instance, will only improve with use and time. “If it gets more patina from the wind and salt, it’s even better,” Mota, who also owns the brand Casa Mota, tells us. “I wanted to keep the vibe very relaxed.”
Terrace
Along the edge of the property line, Mota created the vertical bamboo wall to add more privacy to the terrace.
Outdoor Living Area
On the covered terrace, originally built by architect Juvenal Baracco, the daybed is from Syria, and the poufs are Moroccan.
Outdoor Living Area
A pair of wingback chairs from Indonesia flank a wooden cocktail table and daybed topped with pillows from John Derian.
Living Area
In the living room the pillows are from John Derian, the tables are Moroccan, and the artwork on the wall includes old museum posters.
Terrace
The open-air terrace is often used for lunches that turn into dinners. The bamboo chairs were painted black to add drama, Mota says.
Vignette
The console table is Indonesian, and the plates are from Egypt.
Primary Bedroom
Mota repurposed a screen from India and painted it white to add texture to the primary bedroom. The vintage suzani is from Turkey.
Entry
A painted bench and bougainvillea flank the entrance to the house.
Lolas, who works as a creative consultant and lives a 45-minute drive north in Lima, was first drawn to the surfer town by its laid-back, bohemian feeling. In 2008, she decided to search for a home there. After falling in love with the architecture of this house, which was one of two homes in the area built in the 1980s by celebrated Peruvian architect Juvenal Baracco, Lolas set about working with Mota to create a home that continued to stand out from its neighbors. “I don’t like a beach house that looks like a beach house,” Mota says.
Mota, who began his career as a stylist and launched his first line of fabrics last year, along with a book devoted to the color green, stayed away from covering everything in the open-air space with performance fabrics and nautical stripes. Instead, he picked one place for an outdoor fabric—a custom sofa banquette, which he then topped in a variety of pillows from John Derian. “It needed very little furniture. It mostly just needed to be comfortable because it’s basically an open space,” Mota says. “Nothing precious.”
The carefree vibe carries through to the selection of artwork. Mota and Lolas opted to decorate the walls with museum posters rather than pricey paintings. Perhaps one of Lolas’s favorite pieces in the house is the Indian screen Mota painted white and hung on the primary bedroom wall as a headboard to add texture to the otherwise concrete walls. A vintage suzani from Turkey was selected for the bedcover. From the bedroom, the doors open onto the pool—where Mota extended a bamboo wall out toward the ocean to allow more privacy from neighboring houses—and decorated the pool edge with a sculptural cactus garden.
The collaboration was so fruitful that Mota and Lolas have embarked on another project together, a beach house in Máncora, in northwestern Peru. But Lolas still plans to spend plenty of time on the terrace in Pulpos. Here, alongside all those crashing waves, “I feel very happy, free, and relaxed.”
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