With his British accent, Oxford pedigree, and penchant for prints, designer Peter Dunham has been bringing his Englishman-in-L.A. style to the West Coast since he moved to California in 1998. But it turns out that the interior designer actually grew up in Paris, the son of a French father and a British mother. So when Dunham recently acquired an apartment in the City of Light, it was a homecoming of sorts.
The 300-square-foot pied-à-terre—two small former maid’s rooms combined into one—overlooks the Seine in the city’s sixth arrondissement. The address is familiar to Dunham: His mother has lived on the third floor of the Haussmannian building since the 1980s. Four years ago, the daughter of a former neighbor contacted his mother. The woman had found a 1985 letter from Dunham’s mother offering to buy the flat if it ever became available. Dunham had been looking for a permanent place to stay on visits to Paris for sourcing trips and to be closer to family. “How quickly can I say yes?” he replied when his mother asked if he would be interested in the space.
In the living room of Peter Dunham’s apartment in an 1860s building in Paris, the vintage leather sofa and the oak chair are from Stéphanie Pol at the Paul Bert Serpette flea market, and the artwork (right) is by Jacques Dunham, Peter’s uncle.
In designing the sixth-floor apartment, Dunham did not want to distract from the views of such Parisian landmarks as Sacré-Coeur, the Louvre, and Notre-Dame. To that end, he wrapped the walls in raffia in a warm, neutral shade that creates a calming backdrop.
Trips to Paris flea markets netted a leather (with sections that detach—essential for navigating the piece up the building’s narrow stairs), vintage chairs, and cocktail tables with bronze tops that Dunham speculates were once used as ventilation covers. A wall of the living room features a midcentury French bar cabinet, which now does double duty as a standing desk. A lithograph by Pablo Picasso is a nod to one of the area’s best known former residents, who once lived and worked down the street.
Dunham uses the 1950s French bar he found at the Clignancourt flea market as a standing desk in the living room. The wallpaper is by Gregorius Pineo, the terra-cotta box by Mattia Bonetti, and artworks (from left) by Pablo Picasso and Marc Favresse.
Glue gun in hand, Dunham used trim to create a romantic oxblood border around the edges of the living room. The bold hue, subtle here, explodes in the adjacent bedroom, which is swathed in one of Dunham’s linens in a custom . This kind of contrast is a design credo for Dunham. “There is always a need for some rice with the gumbo,” he says. “We all have a certain balance.”
The vintage bronze cocktail tables are from Marché Vernaison, and the 1950s leather table lamp is by Jacques Adnet.
The cozy bedroom also exemplifies his eclectic design approach, with its 1970s hammered copper headboard, antique Indian miniatures rehung in Syrian handmade frames, and vintage bedside bookcases that perfectly fit in the narrow space between the bed and the wall. Indeed, every nook and cranny in this tiny apartment has a purpose. Dunham—who will open a New York showroom this July for his L.A.-based Hollywood of fabrics and furniture—says he hopes to eventually spend a month or two at a time in Paris. For now, his pied-à-terre is in use for shorter trips to the city.
The hammered copper headboard in the bedroom is from the 1970s, the vintage bedcover is from India, and the wallpaper and curtains are of a fabric by Peter Dunham Textiles.
While the apartment is undoubtedly compact, it feels bigger when Dunham steps onto its small terrace, which has postcard panorama views of the Seine and the Île de la Cité. He compares living in his Parisian jewel box to that more American concept: the van life. “It’s my Airstream in the sky in Paris,” he says with a laugh.
This story originally appeared in the Summer 2024 issue of ELLE DECOR.