Casa Brezza

An arched timber gate on a quiet Umalas lane opens onto white render, bougainvillea and turquoise water. Casa Brezza is a Mediterranean idea dropped into a Balinese side street: rounded parapets, arched openings, a sculpted external staircase climbing one wall to a roof terrace, and a pool laid down the middle of a courtyard paved in pale stone with teak loungers along its edge. On the shaded side a run of white pergola beams covers a terrace, and set into the wall behind it is an arched daybed niche tiled in blue-green mosaic, deep enough to lose an afternoon in. The whole plot reads white, blue and green and almost nothing else.

The ground floor carries the same idea inside. A curved white staircase rises out of the living room like something sculpted rather than built, and beneath it a grey sectional and two blue armchairs sit around a live-edge driftwood table on a striped orange kilim, facing a smart television and a woven wall hanging. Black-framed glass runs the length of the courtyard wall, so the room is really a loggia. The kitchen is the surprise: a long island topped in marble with a fluted timber front and four bar stools, pink dome pendants above it, a gas hob and oven behind, and an arched niche of open shelves. A black tulip dining table sits alongside under a wide white pendant.

Three king bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, air conditioning and a ceiling fan, are spread across the two floors, and the arch motif follows them upstairs: arched alcoves beside the beds, arched windows, blue louvred shutters. Headboards are carved timber or woven rattan, the throws are indigo ikat and fringed pink, and most rooms slide straight onto a terrace with a view over the neighbouring roofs. The bathrooms are done in pale microcement with fluted timber vanities and oval backlit mirrors, and two of them hold freestanding oval tubs — one under a tall arched window with a shower alongside, which is the best five minutes of the day after the beach.

Because the kitchen here is genuinely the best room in the house, a private cook is the request worth making at Casa Brezza; dinner at that marble island, with the pool lit outside the glass, beats most tables in Kerobokan. Housekeeping comes every day, and the water and the planting are looked after a couple of times a week without anyone noticing it happen. The concierge will set a massage table under the pergola beams, or fit a pool fence before a family with toddlers arrives. Finns is 2.6 kilometres away and Potato Head and Old Man’s about 3.2, all close enough that a driver for the evening makes more sense than parking.

Casa Brezza gets its confidence from restraint: white plaster, one blue pool, one orange rug, and arches doing all the decorating. Six guests get three equal king suites, Seminyak and Canggu sit a short drive either side of the lane, and most people end up spending far more of the week in that mosaic niche than they planned to.