House renovation in Île-de-France.

Every house has its own story.

Renovating a house is not renovating a large apartment: the building belongs to you in its entirety, from ridge to foundations, and every decision commits the whole. This is precisely the territory of a general contractor: a single team carries the design, the authorisations and the execution across every trade, under a single contract. The method is the same one we apply to apartment renovation in Paris — understand the building, understand how you live, cost honestly, then execute — widened to the scale of a house. Our Versailles project, Le Marquis, 130 m² renovated across the full range of trade packages — demolition, structural work, plastering, electrics, plumbing, painting, floor and wall coverings — with twelve artisans coordinated over six months, illustrates this capacity to hold a complete residential site together in Île-de-France. And on the pure design side, The Florida Project, a 180 m² house drawn for an American client in Miami, shows that the single-family house is part of our culture as architects. When the project outgrows the existing walls, our extension & roof extension page details the creation of brand-new square metres.

The townhouse

Terraced, narrow and tall, often built in the nineteenth century, the townhouse of Paris and its inner suburbs concentrates the challenges: a staircase that structures the entire plan, rooms in enfilade waiting to be redistributed, daylight to be captured deep within the block, party walls framing every intervention. We work on it as we do on Haussmann fabric — respect for original features, networks entirely renewed, layouts drawn to the millimetre — with particular attention to party-wall rules and the immediate neighbours, who are as much a part of the project as the drawings themselves.

The meulière house

An emblem of the residential suburbs to the west and south of Paris, the meulière — built in the local millstone — seduces with its character, and earns it through its technicalities. Thick, irregular millstone walls, timber floors that sometimes show their age, semi-buried cellars, original joinery and ceramics worth preserving: renovating a meulière means constantly arbitrating between restoration and modernisation. Our position never varies: keep what gives the property its value — rockwork façades, cement tiles, stained glass, panelling — and renew everything that cannot be seen: electrics, plumbing, heating, insulation, ventilation.

The suburban villa to transform

The suburban house of the 1930s to the 1970s is often the best potential-to-price ratio in Île-de-France: a sound structure, a dated floor plan, thermal performance of its era. The renovation there is often total — complete redistribution, kitchen opened onto the living room, master suite, insulation rethought — and that is exactly what makes it so rewarding: the contrast between before and after is spectacular. As with Le Vénitien, 240 m² rethought as a family cocoon for the primary residence of one of our clients, the aim is never newness for its own sake: it is to make the house the exact setting for the life you want to lead in it.

The roof and envelope, approached with method.

A house exposes trade packages an apartment never knows: the roof, the façades, the external joinery, sometimes the drainage. We approach them with prudence and method. Everything begins with a survey: condition of the roof covering and the timber frame, damp in the walls, state of the buried networks. Where works prove necessary, we integrate them into the overall project, coordinating specialist firms — roofers, façade specialists, carpenters — under our single contract and our responsibility, rather than leaving you to manage those interfaces yourself. The order of operations is non-negotiable: you do not deliver fine finishes beneath a tired roof — the weathertight envelope always comes before the interior. And every intervention is covered by our €5,000,000 ten-year warranty insurance.

Renovating in Île-de-France: the formalities.

A house has rules of its own. Altering a façade, replacing joinery visible from the street, creating a new opening: all interventions subject to a prior declaration of works, or to planning permission depending on their scale, in accordance with the local planning code of each commune. In Versailles, in Saint-Germain-en-Laye or near a listed monument, the opinion of the Architectes des Bâtiments de France is added to the file. These procedures have their own lead times: we build them into the schedule from the design stage, so that paperwork never becomes the critical path of the project. On the real duration of a renovation project, phase by phase, our timeline guide sets out honest figures — a house follows the same logic, at the scale of its additional trade packages.

How we work.

Your project follows a clearly marked path, with no grey areas. The initial conversation first: you describe your house and your wishes, we reply within 48 hours with a first reading. Then the survey and the design: measurements on site, investigative openings where the building demands them, plans, reconfiguration of the volumes, choice of materials, detailed costing item by item — on a house, this phase matters even more than elsewhere, because it is the one that reveals the true condition of the roof and envelope. Comes the single contract: one document, one committed price, one key-handover date. During the works, a dedicated site manager coordinates the trades in the order common sense dictates — the envelope first, then structure and networks, finishes last — and keeps you informed at a regular rhythm. At the handover: meticulous inspection, clearing of reservations, keys in hand. Ten years of warranty cover begin that day.

How much it costs.

The ranges observed across Île-de-France match those of Paris: €1,000 to €1,200/m² for a refresh, €1,800 to €2,500/m² for a carefully executed full renovation, €2,500/m² and above for the high end — a quality renovation at W.A.R.D averaging around €2,000/m². On a house, two variables weigh particularly heavily: the condition of the roof and envelope, which can add entire trade packages to the project, and the thermal performance you are aiming for. This is why we never cost from photographs: a serious budget is built item by item, after a site visit. The projects in our portfolio give the measure of the standard we aim for; for a precise costing of your house, describe your project to us: answer within 48 hours.