Foulon

Verbier Cool

Chalet Foulon is cool, super cool, almost achingly cool. In a good way. The architecture of its interior space embraces modern alpine with fabulous geometrics and carries it off with pleasing precision. You see it in the slope of a ceiling and its supporting columns, in the angle of a window frame, or the equilibrium of carefully positioned fittings. It achieves all this and then feels calming, comfortable and even cosy. It does not seem to try too hard.

Perhaps it is the unpretentious choice of furnishings that do luxury with a subtle touch. Perhaps it is the warmth of the light-hued slightly weathered timber with which walls and ceilings are clad. The exterior mirrors this somewhat magical effect. A youthful chalet with the sloping roof of its forebears and elders and a fitting use of local stone, and yet unashamedly new and enjoying the sunshine reflecting off its shiny windows.

From the other side of those windows, in the open plan living and dining room, the spectacular view is almost flirtatious, filling the space with its beauty. A gentle grey/beige colour scheme lends tranquillity and keeps the focus on the mountains. The kitchen is very much part of the room, your professional chef will be part of the family, nothing obstructs the impact of the panorama through the windows. We have seen many sleek kitchens but this one successfully, artistically even, blends into the living area more than any other, using the same lovely wood that hugs the rest of the house.

Chalet Foulon also ups the coolness quotient in its spa. The indoor-outdoor pool is one of those joys of the mountain spa experience; your inner teenager, almost ready for adulthood and yet still playful, gets such a kick out of the exhilarating opportunity to swim through the barrier between inner warmth and icy cold. Then, a hop to an outdoor hot tub to intensify the fun and yet soothe with its bubbles, followed, or preceded by, the profound heat of the sauna. There is no time to be bored. And there is always a retreat to the home cinema, essentially a salubrious hideaway with a massive sofa and an enormous screen.

Most of the bedrooms occupy this, the ground floor. Two doubles, both en-suite, are properly grown up, all subtle colours, a refined hint of luxury and wide windows that continue that loving yet respectful affinity with the mountain landscape beyond. The third is the children’s paradise, where up to four can sleep in sturdily built-in bunkbeds. The master reaffirms its status by claiming the top floor to itself and including a dressing room, a large bathroom with a bathtub and access to its own balcony. Other members of the party might wander up as this is also where the small fitness room is located, if any of them find the time to do so with so many other activities to pursue.

Chalet Foulon breathes cool. It deserves the epithet “too cool for school” as it is a dignified, gloriously contemporary, sort of cool, brimming with good taste and style. It is also an unusually relaxing sort of cool and it can’t take itself too seriously as it clearly knows how to have fun.