In Versilia, a hotel’s whole year is decided in twelve weeks. From mid-June to early September the rates in Forte dei Marmi reach levels found almost nowhere else in Italy, and the guest paying them compares the room with the villa they could have rented two hundred metres away. We design and build bespoke furniture for that comparison, with work concentrated between October and March and delivery before opening.
The real competitor is the rental villa
A villa with a garden and five bedrooms takes guests away from local hotels in season. Hoteliers who have kept pace have responded in three ways, and all three come down to furniture. They’ve merged rooms to create 40 or 50 square metre suites with a genuine living area, a proper-sized sofa and a table for four. They’ve turned ground-floor rooms into rooms with a private garden fenced by hedges, furnished as a liveable outdoor space rather than an oversized balcony. They’ve raised the level of everything guests touch: handles, fabrics, sanitaryware, lighting.
Service does the rest, but the first judgement comes the moment the door opens. In a property where the average nightly rate is above a certain level, a room with standard catalogue furniture stands out, and the review talks about value for money. The design principles for a boutique hotel apply here too, even to forty-key hotels that aren’t boutique at all.
Marble is around the corner, and it’s worth using
Between Pietrasanta and Carrara are workshops that have worked marble for centuries, and slabs and skilled hands are just a few kilometres from any Versilia hotel. On bathroom furniture tops, bar counter surfaces and consoles we often use local marble 20 millimetres thick with a polished or bevelled flush edge, with the template taken directly from the finished piece.
Two warnings that come straight from the job site. White marble absorbs: on washbasin tops it needs a water-repellent treatment reapplied every two seasons, otherwise cosmetic oils leave dark stains that never come out. And the weight: a 160-centimetre top in 20-millimetre marble weighs over 40 kilos, so the base needs reinforcing and the wall fixing designed accordingly. In rooms on upper floors without an adequate lift, we consider large-format porcelain stoneware, which gives a similar look at a third of the weight.
Salt, sand and pine-wood humidity
Versilia has a different kind of aggression to a rocky coastline: less driving salt spray, more constant humidity and sand everywhere. Sand is abrasive and works its way into tracks, so sliding doors in bedrooms should be avoided in favour of hinged ones, and furniture feet need to be replaceable because they wear down.
On sea exposure the same criteria apply as for salt-resistant materials: stainless-steel fittings, anodised aluminium, solution-dyed acrylic fabrics for outdoor use, no wood-based panels outside the bedrooms. Pine-wood humidity gets into ground-floor furniture: backs kept clear of the wall, ventilated plinths and water-resistant shelving in rooms that face onto greenery.
One detail we always sort out in front-row properties: the handles and hinges on sea-facing French windows, which seize up after three seasons. We replace them with marine-grade fittings during the winter works, alongside the furniture, not in June with guests already in the rooms.
What we make, from the bedroom to the beach changing room
Suites created by merging two rooms
Layout redesign with a fitted dividing wall unit, a sleeping area separated by a screen, and a living area with a 200-centimetre sofa, not a 160.
Ground-floor rooms with a garden
Indoor furniture coordinated with the outdoor pieces, a French window free of clutter, technical curtains and continuous flooring between inside and out.
Furniture for beach clubs
Changing cabins with an aluminium frame and phenolic panels, stainless-steel benches and coat racks, bar counters and service units designed to be dismantled and stored away in October.
Outdoor dining areas and entrance gardens
Seating with draining foam and removable covers, tables with weighted bases against the libeccio wind, bespoke planters that act as a screen from the street.
Bathrooms with Carrara marble tops
Reinforced wall-hung units, tops with under-mount basins, backlit mirrors with the back protected against humidity.
Reception and lobbies in historic hotels
Two-part desks in dark wood species and satin brass, in keeping with the 1920s and 1930s buildings that characterise Viareggio and the Lido.
From October to March, with Carnival in between
The Versilia season closes in mid-September and, for properties that stay open, picks up again with the spring bank holidays. The working window is therefore long, but not entirely free: Viareggio Carnival fills the February weekends and some properties reopen for those days, so the works need to be planned so they can be paused and cleared within twenty-four hours, or completed by the end of January.
The calendar that works for a refurbishment of twenty or thirty rooms: survey and design in September, samples approved by October, production from November to January, installation in February and March, handover by the first ten days of April. On cost, a high-end Versilia room refurbished with complete bespoke furniture falls between 9,000 and 15,000 euros per key excluding the bathroom, and suites fall outside that range because they include a living area and more linear metres of furniture. The variables that govern the budget per room are mainly the number of different finishes and the quantity of repeatable pieces.
The beach club’s furniture follows its own calendar: it’s dismantled in October, checked in storage, and the new pieces are installed in May, before the first season-ticket holders arrive. Anyone who leaves it until June ends up working among guests. The seasonal opening checklist we provide keeps the two calendars, rooms and beach, working together, because they are two different projects with the same arrival date. Anyone who also runs properties on the Romagna riviera will find the same logic applied in Riccione and Cattolica, with different budgets and room formats. For an initial estimate, a floor plan with the number of keys and the reopening date is enough: from there we put together the quote.
Frequently asked questions
Is it worth merging rooms to create suites?
In Forte dei Marmi properties, almost always yes. Two 20-square-metre doubles sell for less than one 40-square-metre suite with a living area, and the cost of merging them is recovered in two or three seasons. The ratio between bathrooms and keys required by the classification needs checking first.
Does white marble on washbasins stain?
Yes, if untreated, especially from sun cream and oils. With a specific sealant applied at the end of the works and reapplied every two seasons, it stays clean. Alternatively, a denser marble or a porcelain stoneware that mimics it can be used, at much less weight.
Do you furnish beach clubs too?
Yes, changing cabins, counters, service furniture and seating. These are pieces that spend five months outdoors and seven in storage, so they need to be designed to be dismantled quickly and to withstand sand and humidity while stored.
When do I need to decide to be ready by June?
Design signed off by September, samples by October. A refurbishment decided in February for a June opening can only be done with ready-to-ship furniture, which in Versilia is rarely what’s needed.