Villa Prana Umalas

Villa Prana stands behind a gate on Jalan Umalas II, and the lane outside gives away nothing of what is inside. Past the entry the ground opens into a single long garden with a green-tiled pool down its spine, a strip of lawn on one side and a colonnade of square white columns on the other, holding up a covered walkway that runs the whole length of the house. Frangipani lean over the water at the far end, where a thatched bale shades a low daybed and the pool broadens into a shallow shelf you can sit on with a drink. The quiet lanes and remaining rice fields of Umalas begin a few streets away, and Seminyak and Canggu sit about ten minutes off in either direction.

The living pavilion behind that colonnade is one uninterrupted room, and it is genuinely large — a deep sectional on a jute rug, a low slab of a coffee table, polished concrete underfoot and a ceiling that lifts into a gable above black fans and slot windows. Glass slides away along the entire pool side, so the room ends wherever you decide it does. At the other end a raw-edged timber table seats ten beneath a beaded crystal chandelier, and past it the kitchen is built around a black concrete island with bar stools and a row of copper-lined pendants. A steel staircase of cantilevered treads climbs the wall to a mezzanine study set under a gable of steel-framed glass.

Five bedrooms, five bathrooms, a king bed in every one — the layout does not rank its guests. Two rooms are floored in timber and the rest in polished concrete, and each has been given its own character by the designer Tina Kirschner: a wavy-framed mirror and a blue abstract in one, a yellow heart canvas and a teardrop mirror in another, a deep grey headboard wall in a third. The bathrooms are where the villa shows off. One sets a white oval tub between twin round mirrors and a courtyard of heliconia and banana palm; another sinks a black stone tub into a bed of dark pebbles under open sky. Elsewhere there are trough basins on floating vanities, backlit mirrors and a sage-tiled walk-in shower.

Staff come daily, and the arrangement here is unusually generous — they will do the grocery run and cook breakfast, and you pay only for the food. A welcome drink, towels for the pool and the bathroom, fast Wi-Fi, a safe and parking inside the gate come with the stay, while the concierge handles airport transfers, a car with or without a driver, scooters, a private cook for dinner, massages at the villa, a nanny, a pool fence, laundry and days out among the temples. There is an air-conditioned study for anyone who has to work and a rooftop for anyone who would rather not. Ten guests across five equal suites suits two families, or a group of friends who all want the same room.

Villa Prana is a designer’s house that has not forgotten it is also a holiday one: concrete, steel and serious art on one hand, petals in the bath and a bale by the pool on the other. Ten people can spread out here without ever getting in each other’s way, which in Umalas is rarer than it sounds.