Georgia 
There is a particular quality of light that comes through a window when the trees outside are covered in snow and the ceiling above you is warm pine. That is the light this house was made for. Sitting on a sloping forest site in Sutton, Quebec, overlooking a small pond, the De La Coulee Douce Multi Generational Home holds its ground with almost deliberate modesty — elongated, low, and oriented so that every main room faces the water and the tree line.
The Project
The De La Coulee Douce Multi Generational Home was designed by interior design studio La Nony FAMILI in collaboration with architectural designer Le Local Design, completed in 2025 in Sutton, Quebec. At 3,990 square feet, the home was built for a multi-generational family who had already worked with the same team on a previous residence — a continuity that gave the designers room to go deeper into how this particular family actually lives, what rhythms their days follow, and what intergenerational cohabitation looks like in practice rather than in theory.
The brief was precise in its values if not its finishes: a human-scale home that sits lightly in its forested context, performs efficiently, and avoids anything superfluous. When a mid-construction budget adjustment required a major redesign — a full floor removed, functions combined, all technical drawings revised within forty-eight hours — the team treated it as a clarifying constraint rather than a setback. The result is more compact and more direct than the original plan, and probably better for it.
Associate designer Aza Lussier describes the emotional starting point for every project: “I like to start a project by asking clients how they want to feel in their home. Do we want a place that soothes, that reassures, that inspires? The desired emotion then becomes a guiding thread for all design decisions.” Here, that thread was connection — to oneself, to others, to the forest just outside the glass.
SaveThe Spaces
The Living Area and Fireplace
The centerpiece of the main living area is a floor-to-ceiling fireplace clad in ribbed terracotta-toned artisan tile, its form monolithic and warm against the white walls and pale pine ceiling. A built-in bench seat wraps around the base, upholstered in off-white, with rust-colored cushions. Beside it, a vintage upright piano sits on the micro-cement floor platform, and a window seat with open firewood storage below brings the forest directly into the sightline of anyone sitting near the fire. The tile surface catches raking afternoon light and casts soft shadows across its fluted texture — a detail that reads differently at every hour of the day.
SaveThe Arched Threshold to the Music Nook
One of the most quietly considered moves in the house is the arched opening that frames the transition from the main circulation into the fireplace and piano alcove. Seen from the hallway side, the arch is cut into a thick plaster wall with a hand-textured, slightly rough finish, and the view through it compresses and then opens: pine ceiling sloping upward, a double globe wall sconce mounted to one side, the piano in the left corner, the fire visible to the right. The arch does not announce itself — it simply changes how you arrive at the space, slowing you down slightly and making the room feel like something you step into rather than through.
SaveThe Kitchen
Set slightly back from the living area and tucked behind the volume housing the mudroom and pantry, the kitchen is quieter than the social spaces but no less considered. Flat-front oak cabinetry runs on all sides, with the same carved slot pulls used throughout. The island — white composite top, rounded corners — anchors the center, and three pendant lights with globe bulbs and hat-shaped shades hang above it. A wide picture window over the sink frames the snow-covered forest directly, and the ribbed tile backsplash picks up the same fluted language as the fireplace surround in the next room. A discreet arched opening in the plaster wall leads into a fully fitted pantry lined with pine shelving, a diamond wine rack at the base, and warm recessed lighting that makes it feel more like a small room than a storage closet.
SaveWhat you might carry home
The most transferable idea from this project is the one Aza Lussier names outright: decide how you want to feel in a room before you decide what goes in it. It sounds abstract until you look at how consistently it played out here. The terracotta fireplace tile was not chosen because it is on trend — it was chosen because a tactile, warm surface beside a fire in a Quebec winter answers a specific emotional need. If you are redoing a living room, try writing down one or two words for the feeling you are after before you open a single product tab.
The arches in this house are doing real work, not decorative work. Each one slows your movement through a transition and signals that the space on the other side operates at a different register. You do not need an arch to achieve this — a change in ceiling height, a half-wall, or even a deliberate narrowing of a doorway can create the same pause. The point is that transitions between rooms are worth designing, not just leaving as gaps in the framing.
Wood on the ceiling is one of the most underused moves in suburban residential interiors. In every room in this house, the knotty pine tongue-and-groove ceiling is what unifies the palette and adds warmth without adding visual clutter. It works here alongside plaster walls and concrete floors precisely because it is not competing with anything — the walls are kept deliberately plain. If you have been considering a wood ceiling treatment, the lesson from this project is to let it be the richest material in the room and keep everything else quieter.
Finally, the pantry arch: tucking a fully fitted storage room behind an arched opening in a plaster wall turns a functional necessity into a moment of discovery. In a home where storage is always fighting for space, this approach hides the practical without pretending it does not exist. Even a simple arch cut into drywall, finished in plaster, and fitted with open pine shelves can shift how a utility space reads.
SaveThe De La Coulee Douce Multi Generational Home is a reminder that the most resolved projects tend to come from the clearest intentions — and that a well-placed constraint, like a budget revision forcing a more compact plan, can end up being the thing that makes the design honest. Photography by Ulysse Lermerise Bouchard, OSA images.
