Designing a Tuscan holiday home you actually want to live in — and that still rents well

1. Start with how you will use the house yourself

A holiday home is often a long-held dream. Its views, materials, colours and objects should say something about the people who own it. Removing all personality to please everyone usually produces a forgettable rental that competes only on price.

The design task is to protect that personal character while making circulation, sleeping, storage, lighting and maintenance easy for people who do not know the house. Keep the story specific; make the experience broadly usable.

2. Then design for the guest's first three seconds

Guests decide on a listing before they read the description. The first three photographs carry the booking: typically the living area, the main bedroom and the outdoor space or terrace.

That means one hero space has to read instantly. It is a design decision — layout, light, materials, furniture, styling — and only then a photography one.

3. Durability is part of the design brief

Changeover days are hard on interiors. Choose finishes that improve with use: solid wood, stone, linen, lime paint, ceramics. Avoid anything that shows every mark after two weeks.

Fewer, better pieces usually cost less over three seasons than replacing cheap furniture twice. The house also photographs better because every item earns its place.

4. Photography is the final design layer

Professional interior photography is what turns the work into clicks. I photograph the finished house myself so the images match what guests actually walk into, across booking platforms, the website and social channels.

Without that step, even a strong interior underperforms because it never gets the chance to be seen properly.

What the result can look like

Villa Mia near Lucca is the clearest realised case in my own work: it generates twice the rental revenue of comparable properties in the area. That is not a guarantee for every home — location, seasonality, pricing and management all matter — but it shows what happens when personal taste, guest experience, durable materials and strong photography are designed as one system.