Auñón Cabrera builds a home in Moraira (Alicante) that now feels Mediterranean, without having lost its history

Moraira is, without doubt, Alicante’s hidden gem. Its narrow streets and whitewashed houses descend toward a harbour that still shares its moorings between fishing boats and leisure craft, a legacy of generations who lived off the sea before tourism arrived. Wrapped in hills and vineyards, and watched over since the 18th century by the castle that once defended the coast from pirates and corsairs, the village retains a recognisable identity and the most genuine Mediterranean essence.

It is in this setting that the house María José Auñón Cabrera has fully renovated is found, a house that until now followed a Central European-inspired aesthetic, foreign to this stretch of the Alicante Costa Blanca. The owners wanted to recover a warm, Mediterranean way of living in keeping with their surroundings, while preserving the original clay flooring found throughout the house.

The clay floor, key to its new identity

Clay floors are once again taking centre stage in interior design, valued for their beauty, insulating capacity, easy upkeep and, above all, their natural, artisanal character. The interior designer not only preserves them, but turns them into the key to the house’s new identity. Their warm tones define a palette completed with off-whites, oak wood, plant fibres and linen. The result is a house where every material points back to the same origin, with no contrasts to break the continuity between rooms.

This continuity is felt most clearly when walking through the ground floor. The living room, arranged around a low-lined modular sofa, opens onto the dining room through the same clay flooring, natural-fibre rugs and light filtered through linen textiles. The staircase, clad in the same ceramic material, visually unfolds the home’s different levels without interrupting the reading of the whole. In the dining room, the solid wood table, custom-designed by the studio, occupies the centre of the space and organises the Wishbone chairs by Carl Hansen around it, a gesture that puts timeless design ahead of decorative originality.

Custom-made furniture, one of the project’s central threads

Custom-made furniture is, in fact, one of the project’s central threads, with a strong presence throughout every space. The kitchen, bathrooms, wardrobes, TV unit and dining table are conceived as pieces of integrated architecture. The wardrobes are designed as large-scale volumes combining oak wood with natural-fibre lattice, a reinterpretation of traditional carpentry that brings visual lightness to pieces of considerable presence.

In the bathrooms, the interior designer introduces a chromatic counterpoint. Against a sober backdrop, the new ceramic wall tiles —from the Harmony Lagoon collection— are concentrated in specific areas, adding texture and depth without breaking the overall harmony. In the main bathroom, a lamp custom-designed for the project is clad in the same ceramic as the walls, becoming a detail that condenses the logic of the whole design: each piece refers back to the others.

The relationship with the outdoors is resolved with the same economy of means. The porches and terrace, paved in the same earthy tone, extend the house toward the pool and garden, where the existing palm and lemon trees are preserved as part of the domestic landscape. The outdoor furniture, in natural wood and woven fibres, maintains the material vocabulary of the interior and avoids any break between what is built and what is planted.

The project shows that keeping the original flooring was not a limitation, quite the opposite, the presence of the natural clay has become the guiding thread of a home where interior design, furniture and architecture share the same material origin and the same intent, that of building a home that now feels Mediterranean, without having lost its history.

Materials and furniture

Flooring: clay, existing in the house. Carpentry: Custom-made, in oak wood lacquered in a natural finish. Bathroom tiling: Harmony Lagoon. Taps: Sanycess, gun metal finish. Sofa: Indera. Chairs: Wishbone, by Carl Hansen. Dining table and TV unit: Custom design, Auñón Cabrera studio. Bedroom wardrobe: Custom design in oak and rattan, Auñón Cabrera studio.

Project: Full renovation of a single-family home.
Location: Moraira, Costa Blanca (Alicante).
Surface area: 234 m² (basement 80 m². ground floor 140 m² + porches 50.28 m² + terrace 106.47 m² + pool 36 m². first floor 70 m²).
Interior design: Auñón Cabrera.
Photography: Jonathan Ristagno.
Source: Ana Arnau.

María José Auñón Cabrera

María José Auñón Cabrera is a technical architect and interior designer, founder of the Auñón Cabrera Estudio in Moraira/Teulada, on the Costa Blanca. Her training combines technical architecture and interior design. She studied Technical Architecture at the Universitat Politècnica de València, where she completed a Master’s in Architectural Heritage Conservation, and combined this path with studies in Interior Design at the Escola Superior de Disseny de Valencia. This dual training — technical and design-oriented — has shaped her approach to space from the outset: the attention to detail inherent to the technical discipline, paired with a sensitivity for interior design.

After collaborations with Arquitec and the studio of Pepe Cabrera, where she deepened her expertise in architecture, design, and interior design, she founded her own studio in 2014. This is how Auñón Cabrera Estudio was born, based in Valencia and in Moraira/Teulada (Alicante). Today, twelve years later, the studio has established itself as a multidisciplinary team handling residential, hospitality, office, marine, and cultural projects.

The choice of Moraira/Teulada as a base is no coincidence. The calm and slow living of this stretch of the Mediterranean are, for Auñón Cabrera, a direct reflection of the values she brings to every design. The close relationship with each client — supported by the studio’s independence and the constant presence of its founder — is the foundation of a method that treats interior design as something personal: each space should reflect the identity of the person who inhabits it.

This approach translates into projects where reduction and precision matter more than accumulation: materials, forms, and resources calibrated so that each element sustains the space on its own. Over time, this way of designing has become the studio’s hallmark.

Project by María José Auñón Cabrera