Vives St-Laurent, a Montreal-based interior design firm founded in 2018, has completed the Wood Residence renovation in Westmount. This project focused on restoring and highlighting the home's existing features while preparing it for resale.
Vives St-Laurent preserved key elements in the Wood Residence, such as the staircase location and the organization of main living areas. The renovation introduces a checkerboard pattern of Alpi Verde and Bianco Carrara marble at the entryway, built-in bookshelves that frame the fireplace in the living room, pale-toned white oak flooring throughout, an anthracite French door connecting the kitchen to the outdoor terrace, and a master suite with a spacious ensuite bathroom. This bathroom features a walk-in shower inspired by boutique hotel concepts, two French doors with textured glass, and a large wall-to-wall vanity with a thicker countertop. A small powder room has been discreetly integrated underneath the stairs with a hidden door custom-designed to align with existing moldings.
Image Credit: Alex Lesage
What Makes This Trend Stand Out
- Heritage Feature Preservation
- Renovations that retain original layouts and moldings while introducing contemporary finishes create new market demand for retrofit solutions that harmonize old and new construction techniques.
- Boutique-hotel Bathroom Styling
- Bathrooms designed with walk-in showers, wall-to-wall vanities, and textured glass evoke hospitality-grade amenities being expected in private residences, enabling product innovations in compact luxury fixtures.
- Integrated Hidden Storage and Doors
- Seamlessly concealed powder rooms and custom doors aligned with existing millwork demonstrate a shift toward invisible functionality that could inspire modular concealed systems for varied home geometries.
Sectors Adopting This
- Residential Real-estate Staging
- Homes optimized for resale through curated material palettes and preserved architectural features are creating opportunities for staging services that quantify value uplift from design-led renovations.
- High-end Architectural Millwork
- Demand for built-in bookshelves, custom trim-aligned hidden doors, and oversized vanities is pushing suppliers toward precision prefabrication and bespoke CNC workflows that reconcile craft detail with repeatability.
- Luxury Building Materials Suppliers
- The use of statement marbles, pale engineered woods, and anthracite metal doors signals growing market appetite for premium finish packages that integrate sustainability credentials with high aesthetic impact.
