Chandler Berawa

From the lane there is very little to see: a flat wall of pale render, two slim arched windows high up, and a pair of black arched doors at ground level. Push through them and Chandler Berawa turns out to be built around a courtyard of water. A plunge pool sits in a walled well open to the sky, planting in the corners, small niches cut into the render and lit at night, with glazing on two sides so that the kitchen and dining room look straight into it. Berawa Beach is eight hundred metres off, close enough to walk before the heat, and there is a coffee place a hundred metres up the road.

The house reads as a single bright volume in cream and off-white. A curved boucle sofa sits on a grey rug facing a screen on a fluted black console, and beyond it an oval table in dark timber with curved upholstered chairs stands under a brass globe chandelier. The kitchen closes the room: a fluted white island with three bar stools, a marble-look splashback and, unusually for a villa this size, a proper oven. Every door and window is a black-framed arch, the walls are panelled to dado height, and above the stair hall a glazed roof drops a hard rectangle of daylight onto plain render.

Two king bedrooms, each with its own bathroom and its own screen. One has a fluted headboard wall and an arched recess set into the plaster; the other is panelled in deep teal with an armchair beside the curtained window and a blue rug underfoot. Both have black-out blinds, a wardrobe and a safe, and the wardrobe in the main room is a walk-in with a leaning mirror in it. The bathrooms are the detail worth noting: marble-look tile to dado height, black stone basins on white joinery, brass tapware and arched mirrors, entered through fluted black arched doors, and one shower has a porthole window cut through the wall.

Four guests is the ceiling and there is a garage for one car, which given the walk to the beach is more than most people here need. The oven is the reason to ask the concierge for a chef rather than a delivery, and Balinese is what they cook. Massages come to the house, a pool fence can be fitted before you arrive, and laundry goes out through the desk since there is no machine on site. Staff clean through every day, and someone will open the gate at any hour if the flight lands late. Two couples share it comfortably; a family of four will find it easier still.

Chandler Berawa is a small, disciplined house that gets a great deal out of one idea: put the water in the middle and glaze everything onto it. It is newly finished, it is walkable to the beach and to breakfast, and for two couples or a family of four it does not put a foot wrong.