Oct 12, 2026

Bespoke interior design in and around Zürich often means designing for two very different types of homes. In the city, a private room has to work within shared walls, strict night-quiet rules and tight space, so discretion, acoustics and adaptability come first. In a second home outside the city, there's more room and more freedom, and the challenge shifts to working with an existing house and its rules.

A tent by the airport

Every autumn, a tent goes up in Kloten, a few minutes from Zürich airport. Ohlala, the adult variety show initiated by Gregory and Rolf Knie, returns in mid-October with this year's edition, "The Popcorn Party": pop-art colours, comic-book costumes, acrobatics and a generous dose of sensuality. For a few weeks, an entire space exists for a single purpose, to let an audience lean into play. Then it's packed away.

A private room at home works the other way round. It doesn't need to dazzle, and it doesn't leave town after the final show. It has to live inside a real home for years, and where that home is changes almost everything about the brief.

In the city

Discretion from the first conversation

In the city, a project could be seen by many eyes: building managers, neighbours on the stairwell, delivery drivers, tradespeople. A considered process keeps the project between the people it belongs to. That means confidentiality agreed before any detail is shared, deliveries and installation that don't announce what's being built, and drawings that are shared only with those who need to see them. None of this is visible in the finished room, and that's the point.

The walls are listening

Zürich's police ordinance sets night quiet from 22.00 to 07.00, starting an hour later on Fridays and Saturdays in summer. It applies whether a flat is owned or rented. The rule is taken seriously enough to inspire a persistent rumour across the border in Germany: that flushing the toilet at night is banned in Switzerland. It isn't, as the Swiss tenants' association has had to point out, but the myth says something real about living close together.

Acoustic privacy belongs at the start of a design, not as a fix at the end. Upholstered wall panels, heavy curtains, layered rugs, door seals and furniture placed away from shared walls all help a room keep its own sound. The aim isn't silence. It's the freedom not to think about who might be listening.

In the old town, there's a further layer. Many historic buildings are listed in the city's heritage inventory, and owners have to check what's worth preserving before making changes, even small ones. Where walls can't easily be opened up or insulated, sound control moves into textiles, furniture and joinery instead.

Space that leads a double life

In 2025, the canton's vacancy rate fell below half a percent for the first time in more than twenty years. Even generous city flats rarely have a room to spare for one purpose alone, so a private room often shares its life with a guest bed, a study or a dressing room.

That makes concealment a design skill to consider from the very start. Storage that closes flush, lighting that shifts from daytime to evening, textiles that change a room's mood in minutes. A well-made custom room can have two faces, and only the people who live there need to know both.

If the flat is rented

Around seven in ten households in the canton rent. Under Swiss tenancy law, changes to a rented flat need the landlord's written consent, and without it the original condition has to be restored when the lease ends. For renters, the craft moves into the furniture: freestanding pieces, fittings built into joinery rather than walls, panels that mount and come away cleanly. The room feels permanent while it's there, leaves no trace when it isn't, and can move to the next home.

Beyond the city

For many, the city flat isn't the only home. A chalet in the mountains or a house by a lake changes the brief entirely.

Room to build

With more space, fewer neighbours and walls that belong to the owner, a private room can be bolder and more structural. A whole floor, a hidden wing, a room built into the slope of a roof. Things that would be impossible in a city flat become a matter of design rather than negotiation.

Working with what's already there

Second homes come with their own rules. Since a national vote in 2012, municipalities where more than 20 percent of homes are second homes can no longer approve new ones. However, existing homes can be extended by up to 30 percent of their floor area as long as no new unit is created. In many holiday regions, a private room is therefore more likely to be shaped inside an existing house than built from scratch. Old beams, thick stone walls and low ceilings often become part of the design.

A different kind of discretion

In a village, a building project rarely goes unnoticed. Local people talk, and a new delivery is visible from across the valley. Discretion here is less about thin walls and more about how the work is organized: who builds what, where it's made, and how much of it arrives already finished.

Quality over spectacle

Wherever the room lives, the one that lasts is usually the quieter one. Next to the pop-art fireworks of a stage show, it relies on good materials that age well, joinery that closes without a sound and lighting that can be dimmed to almost nothing. It's made to be lived in and used, not just looked at.