Sliding glazed doors with the frames hidden in the wall, a white spiral staircase and a rear courtyard that works as one more room. Casa Cotton is a renovation with interior design in Nerja (Málaga): a mid-terrace house at the eastern end of the Costa del Sol. The brief came with a limit written into the project report — 108.36 m² of built area that could not grow, and a three-bedroom programme to fit inside it. Whatever the house gains, it gains from within.
The brief: a renovation with interior design in Nerja
The house sits mid-terrace, over ground and first floors: 108.36 m² of built area on a 96.22 m² plot, according to the topographic survey. The project report sets out the rules of the game without hedging: “Under no circumstances is a change of use, an increase in permitted floor area or any alteration to the structure of the existing volume proposed.” In other words, not a single metre could be added. Anything the house gained had to come from redistributing what was already there.
The first decision was about the programme rather than the form. At the outset it was still open whether the house would have two bedrooms or three. The owner settled on three, and that choice fixed the entire upper floor: a principal bedroom with en-suite bathroom and access to a covered terrace, both facing south; two secondary bedrooms facing north; and a second bathroom ventilated and lit through a rooflight. The design and site management are signed by Klic Arquitectos together with BenitoPozo Arquitecto SLP, co-author of the project.
The proposal: the house gains from within
On the ground floor the partition that closed off the kitchen came out, so kitchen and living-dining room now form a single room. The cloakroom moved to the main façade, facing south, so that it gets direct daylight and ventilation instead of relying on an extractor fan. The front door moved too: it now faces the covered porch and works as a sliding glazed door.
The piece that opens up the house is a set of sliding glazed doors with the aluminium frames concealed within the wall of the living-dining-kitchen area. With no visible frames, the interior opens fully onto both outdoor spaces: the front porch and the rear courtyard, with 19.07 m² of usable area. The former front garden was raised to ground-floor level and became a pergola-covered porch, partly roofed — one more living space, and one that does not count towards permitted floor area.
The two floors are connected by a new spiral staircase in a 1.75 × 1.75 m opening. Closing the existing stair opening called for the only structural work in the project: a one-way floor slab of lattice joists and ceramic infill blocks. It is the sort of decision that never shows up in an image, and it explains why a renovation that is “only interior” still needs a structural report stamped (visado) by the College of Architects.
The decisions signed off with the owner
The interior design was not settled on instinct. It was settled in a video call and in the written summary the owner sent afterwards. That is where the specific decisions come from: joinery, pergola and front door in anthracite; glass balustrades; flush white internal doors with black ironmongery; and a white spiral staircase. The cotton white that gives the house its name is on the record.
For the rear courtyard the request was very precise: it should work “as if it were another room”. A pergola that can be roofed over but still lets air through, and an enclosure usable in winter. Reed screening was ruled out in favour of folding louvres over a prefabricated timber pergola. Kitchen, flooring and bathrooms were settled as a single package with one supplier, and the furniture schedule and setting-out dimensions form part of the practice’s own interior design project.
From permit to site
The administrative calendar is the least photogenic part of this project and the most instructive. Nerja Town Hall raised a list of issues on the minor works permit application (licencia de obra menor) — the spiral staircase and its balustrade, the proposed boundary fence, the first-floor balustrade, the structural and foundation justification, and the roof conditions for the domestic hot water system — all of which had to be reworked and justified in a revised set of documents, later stamped by the College of Architects of Málaga (COA), before the decree granting the permit was issued.
Work started on 13 October 2025, with the health and safety plan approved three days earlier and Urbana Infraestructuras e Ingeniería as building contractor, and the works are still under way. If you are weighing up a similar renovation in Nerja, that calendar is the first thing worth reviewing with the practice. Between applying for the permit and being able to start, a good deal more time can pass than you might imagine.
The house has not grown by a single metre, yet it is now used differently: a continuous ground floor running from porch through kitchen-living room to courtyard, and an upper floor with three bedrooms and two bathrooms with natural light. It follows the same line of work on existing homes that the practice has developed at Casa Bluma, in Vélez-Málaga and Casa Duquesa de Parcent, in Málaga’s Soho district, and on the seafront at Casa Caoba, in Torremolinos, and Casa Al Mar, in Benalmádena. In Nerja itself the practice had previously designed Casa Punta Lara, that time a new build. You can browse the rest of our renovation projects with interior design.
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Project details
- Typology: Renovation with interior design of a mid-terrace single-family home (ground and first floors)
- Use: Residential · single-family home
- Location: Nerja · Málaga · Axarquía · eastern Costa del Sol
- Units: 1 home
- Built area: 108.36 m² (the same as the existing house: no increase in permitted floor area)
- Plot area: 96.22 m² according to the topographic survey
- Status: Under construction
- Client: Private client
- Building contractor: Urbana Infraestructuras e Ingeniería S.L.
- Site management: Klicstudio Arquitectura y Diseño SLP with BenitoPozo Arquitecto SLP
- Interior design: Antonia López Díaz (collaborator)
- Klic services: Basic design and construction project, site management, health and safety coordination during construction, interior design and furnishing
- Team: Juan Goñi Uriarte and Ruth Buján Varela (Klicstudio Arquitectura y Diseño SLP), with BenitoPozo Arquitecto SLP
- Images: Visualisations and renders by the practice; the works are still under way and there has been no photo shoot yet
