A 1920s chalet filled with glamorous 20th-century pieces

If Kate isn't available to help me on a project, I'll wait,' says the owner of this chalet in the French Alps. This was her third renovation project with the designer Kate Earle - a fourth is under way - and the first, her house in London, was over 10 years ago. They are now not only designer and client, but 'partners in crime' and firm friends. The owner is heavily involved in each project - she, not Kate, flew out to France for the site meetings: 'it's my house, so it made sense' - and she certainly has a vision of what she wants and how she will live in a house. But she says that even now, after all this experience, she would be loath to do a project by herself, explaining, 'Kate makes sure I don't make any mistakes and brings an aspect to it that I never could.' Kate's natural bent is also for a slightly softer, prettier look than the owner's and she is happy to be pulled in this direction.

The clients had walked past this Twenties chalet for years and longed to own it, as there are few houses in their original state, and with land, remaining in the area. It had been in the same family for generations but had been run lately as an inexpensive B&B; it was chopped up into minute bedrooms and shower rooms and the basement was very uninviting. The tiles in the entrance hall that were revealed when the lino was removed were the only internal detail they could salvage.

Local architect Lionel Adam, of Smile Design & Architecture, was brought in. 'We wanted to maintain the beauty and integrity of the exterior, but have interiors that are "us", with a little element of surprise,' says the owner. The exterior therefore is still very much the 'gingerbread, "Edelweiss" style' that you would expect, but the house has been cleverly reoriented so that it also faces down the hill overlooking the town, not just towards Mont Blanc, as it did before. Huge excava­tions were undertaken and the driveway was relocated so that cars no longer drive through the garden and park obstructing the view, but enter below the house - now underpinned by a striking, monolithic, corten-steel structure - into a garage. Externally, a balcony was added to the main bedroom, which affords views of the town and mountains. Existing openings in the main reception room were made into floor-to-ceiling french windows, to connect the room with the new terrace and reclaimed garden, designed by Randle Siddeley.

The interior is indeed unexpected. Light­filled, with a soothing colour palette, and furnished with glamorous twentieth-century pieces, it is its own little jewellery box of a world, and not like a conventional chalet at all - the only exposed wood is the oak parquet floor, which is a chic grey rather than rustic red. As the owners come here in summer as well as in winter, they wanted it to feel personal and suitable all year round. As Kate says, 'It is a Twenties house in a town; it didn't feel right to decorate it in a typical chalet style.' Also, both Kate and the owner strongly believe that, as the owner puts it, 'a house is soulless if it doesn't have things that have had another life,' and they often go to antiques fairs together, even when there is no specific project in mind. So the house is filled with interesting and pretty furniture, lamps and accessories from the Decorative Antiques & Textiles Fair, Alfies Antique Market, Sean Berg, Philip Thomas and more. 'It is not an art collector's house, though,' the owner points out. 'We wanted it to be comfortable, decorative and elegant.' The ground floor has been opened up to become one open-plan living space comprising kitchen, dining area, sitting area and library/ television area, while cleverly preserving a cosiness to each space and a correct sense of proportion. Simple, flat mouldings, which continue the lines of the glazing bars, were applied to the walls to articulate them and to pull the spaces together. These mouldings also relate to the positions of the shelves in the bookcase and the handles on the doors - 'It is that element of detail that makes a room nice to be in,' says Kate.