Meet Nils

Color, Brocante and Berber Rugs: Inside Nils and Marie's House in Bettembourg

In Bettembourg, behind the facade of a classic Luxembourgish house, Nils Cleworth and Marie Melikov built something different. The street entrance is gone. The garden is on the other side now. And inside, the rules of a traditional row house have been quietly rewritten.

Nils and Marie bought the house a few years ago. They kept what could be kept. They moved what needed to move. Then they opened the ground floor to the light and turned the kitchen into the heart of the home.

The brief was simple. Live downstairs. Cook together. See the garden. Spend less, but choose well.

What makes this project interesting is not a big budget. It is the logic behind every choice. A vintage desk with cut legs. Wallpaper used only where it counts. A wood ceiling discovered by accident and kept raw. Furniture from brocantes mixed with iconic pieces and souvenirs from Morocco.

The garden was designed by Alliance Paysage, with a planting plan drawn season by season. Inside, the couple worked with an interior architect who also ran the site. Outside, a Berber rug bought from a friend in northern Morocco quietly tells you what kind of home this is.

In this visit with She Said Yes!, Nils opens the doors. We walk through a family house renovated with intention. From the open kitchen to the secret sauna. From the chimney to the children’s bedrooms upstairs.

City

Bettembourg

Date

May 2026

Photos & Video

She Said Yes!

SSY Welcome Nils. You bought a classic Luxembourgish house. What was the starting point?

Nils The idea was to do the maximum with the minimum. We kept every structural element we could keep. We did not want to fight the house. We worked on the layout instead. That is where the real value is.

SSY The entrance used to be on the street side. Now it is on the other side. Why move it?

Nils The whole logic of the house changed. The garden, the light, the flow. The old entrance did not make sense anymore. We rethought how we actually live and built around that.

SSY The colors hit you immediately. There is something from Morocco, something from Africa. Was it a deliberate moodboard?

Nils Honestly, no. We love colors and we love mixing things we like. We never ask does this go with that. We ask do I want to look at this every day. The harmony comes from there. It is a patchwork that works.

SSY You mix iconic furniture with brocante finds. How do you balance the two?

Nils A few timeless pieces give the structure. The rest is brocante or things we built ourselves. We took an old desk, cut the legs, and made a low table. That kind of move. The investment pieces create the atmosphere. The lighting especially. Indirect light changes everything.

SSY Speaking of lighting, the suspension above the dining table is striking.

Nils That one was a love at first sight. We saw it in a magazine and we knew. Lighting is the thing I care about most. Get the lights wrong and the whole room dies.

SSY You chose not to extend on the first floor to keep maximum light downstairs. Was that the hardest call?

Nils It was the obvious call once we asked the right question. We live in the kitchen. We live downstairs. So the brief was maximum light, maximum openness. That is why there are so many windows. The first floor stays as it is.

SSY The wooden ceiling in the extension is beautiful. Was it planned?

Nils Pure accident. We were going to install a standard plasterboard ceiling. When the workers removed the old battens, the raw wood underneath looked great. The knots, the texture, everything. So we kept it. It also creates a natural break between the extension and the older part of the house.

SSY The kitchen is open and central. Was that always the plan?

Nils Yes. We had a closed kitchen before and we did not really live in it. We asked ourselves the real questions. Do we need a dining room we use twice a month? Probably not. Do we want an open kitchen with all the smells? Yes, because we cook every day. So the kitchen became the center of the house.

SSY You cook together with Marie?

Nils Always. That is why we wanted a lot of workspace. Two people, two zones, room to move.

SSY The chimney is custom-made. How did you approach it?

Nils We did not have the budget for a sculptural fireplace. So we took an insert designed to be built in, and we made it visible from multiple sides. The surround is just solid plaster. The hearth is a metal plate we can move. Simple pieces, but together they work.

SSY You also flattened the access to the garden. No more steps.

Nils Exactly. Friends of ours had eight or ten steps between their kitchen and their garden. In summer they never used it. Too much friction. So we removed all of that. Now the garden is an extension of the living room.

SSY The entrance has built-in storage everywhere. Custom too?

Nils All custom. Small artisans, not big brands. You save money and the quality is much better. With three kids, storage is not a nice-to-have. It is survival.

SSY You kept the original tiles and the cast iron radiators. Why?

Nils Because they have soul. The boiler is a thirty-year-old gas Buderus. The technician told us not to touch it, it has twenty years left. The radiators are not the most efficient, but the heat they give is different. Soft. And the original floor tiles have a character you cannot recreate.

SSY Upstairs you barely touched anything.

Nils A coat of paint and the parquet lightly sanded. That is it. The three bedrooms were already well distributed. The kids took over. Marie and I have our own floor above, which is honestly a luxury.

SSY The Berber rug in the bedroom has a story.

Nils A friend used to deal in old Berber rugs from northern Morocco. Not the new ones, the real old ones. He found them in families, things that had been used for generations. This one was in our living room before, but we did not want to walk on it anymore. So it came upstairs.

SSY You also have pieces brought back from Marrakech.

Nils Yes. Some of them I literally found in the street. There is a painting I rolled up and brought back myself. It was signed, I liked it, that was enough. Not every piece needs a story you can tell at dinner. Some just need to feel right.

SSY Behind the bedroom there is a hidden room. A sauna.

Nils Yes. There used to be an old smoking room there, an industrial thing, completely useless. We tore it out and built a small sauna. We discovered saunas a few years ago and we are hooked. Now we have one at home. Game over.

SSY The bathrooms are compact but feel generous.

Nils Small surfaces let you spend on materials. We took good tiles, real quality. When the surface is limited, the budget per square meter goes up easily. It is the same logic everywhere in this house. Spend where it shows.

SSY The garden has the same energy as the inside. Who designed it?

Nils Alliance Paysage. They are seriously good. They did not just plant things. They gave us a plan with the look of the garden season by season. So we know what will flower in March, what will look good in October. That kind of service makes a real difference.

SSY Final question. If you had to give one piece of advice to someone starting a renovation?

Nils Ask yourself how you actually live. Not how the house was designed to be lived in. Not how your parents lived. You. Today. The rest follows.

Watch the full video

Nils opens the doors to the family house in Bettembourg. From the open kitchen with its wooden ceiling, to the custom chimney, the children’s bedrooms, the parents’ floor, and the hidden sauna behind the bedroom.

Color, Brocante and Berber Rugs: Inside Nils and Marie's House in Bettembourg

Watch the full video

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