I have made this mistake. Every designer has. You fall in love with a material on a sample board. The colour is perfect. The texture feels right in your hand. You specify it, you install it — and six months later in real light, in real humidity, with real daily use, it is a completely different product from the one you thought you chose.
Surface finishes are the decision that makes or breaks a luxury interior. They are also the decision that most designers make with the least real information. Because samples lie. A 10x10cm square tells you nothing about how a material performs across a 40 square metre suite. Nothing about how it ages in Mediterranean humidity. Nothing about what it actually looks like when the morning sun hits it from the south at 7am.
This is why what Olyra have done at Viluz changes everything for me as a designer working in Marbella.
Viluz is not just a wellness retreat. It is a living, breathing, fully inhabited specification — where every surface you walk on, lean against, and see in every quality of Andalucian light is an Ideal Work product that has been in daily use for months. Real guests. Real moisture. Real Mediterranean conditions.
I walked into Viluz and I walked onto the specification. And what I saw as a designer made me completely rethink how I will approach surface finishes on every luxury project I work on from here. Let me tell you exactly what I found.
Microtopping: The Floor That Makes the Whole Property Feel Like One Thing
The first thing I noticed at Viluz — before I had consciously registered anything — was the floor. Not because it demanded attention. Because it did not. It just continued. From the entrance through the corridor into the bedroom onto the terrace threshold — one continuous surface, no joints, no transitions, no moment where the material ended and something else began. The whole property breathes as a single space because of this.
The continuous floor at Viluz — no joints, no transitions, one surface throughout
That is Microtopping. Ideal Work's flagship 3mm cement-polymer system. Applied directly over existing substrates, seamless, joint-free, continuous across every surface including curved ones.
But what you cannot understand from the product description is the colour in real light. The tone at Viluz is a warm greige — not cold, not industrial, not the flat grey you sometimes see in microcement applications that looks beautiful in a photograph and clinical in person. This reads warm because the Mediterranean light is warm. Because the material has depth — that slight variation in tone that a synthetic surface never has. Because it has been walked on barefoot by guests for months and it has not flattened or lost anything. It has settled.
As a designer this is the information I needed. Not the technical data sheet. The floor after six months of daily use in a luxury wellness property in Andalucia. That is the specification I can trust.
And from a technical standpoint — Microtopping is 3mm thin, which means you apply it over existing tiles, over concrete, over almost any solid substrate without raising floor levels significantly. For renovation projects on the Costa del Sol — and most of my work is renovation — this is the difference between a real option and a theoretical one.
Solidro: The Wet Room That Proved Something to Me
I photograph every bathroom I walk into professionally. It is just what I do.
When I walked into the shower at Viluz — that arched niche in warm ochre tones, the brass rainfall head, the seamless floor-to-wall-to-ceiling application — I photographed it immediately. Not because it was beautiful, although it was. Because it answered a question I have been asking for years.
Can a surface be genuinely waterproof, perform in daily steam and humidity, and still look and feel like a natural organic material rather than a sealed synthetic one? The answer at Viluz is yes. And the product is Solidro.
The Saraswati suite wet room, finished in Solidro, Viluz Marbella
Solidro is Ideal Work's newest system and the most technically advanced. Completely epoxy-free. Fully waterproof. Scratch resistant, stain resistant, rated for 15 to 20 years of performance. Available in the Valentina Collection palette which gives you a range of warm, natural tones rather than the cold industrial colours that microcement used to be limited to.
What struck me standing in that shower is that the surface still breathes. It still has that slight organic variation in tone that makes a material look real rather than printed. It does not have the plasticky sealed look that most waterproof surface solutions give you. It looks like a material that belongs in a space designed around natural elements — because at Viluz, everything is.
The arch application is particularly impressive. Solidro follows curves and organic forms without cracking or separating at the edges. This matters enormously for the kind of architectural details that define high-end projects in Marbella — arched niches, curved walls, bespoke shower forms. Most surface finishes fight these shapes. Solidro follows them.
For any designer or developer working on a luxury bathroom specification in southern Spain — this is the product I would now put at the top of the list. Not because of the brochure. Because I have seen it functioning in a real wet room in real Andalucian conditions and it does exactly what it says.
Terrae-Calce: Three Walls, Three Completely Different Worlds
This is where Ideal Work genuinely surprised me.
I knew about Terrae-Calce — the natural lime wall finish range — before visiting Viluz. I had seen it on samples. What I had not understood until I walked through the property is that Matera, Siena and Venezia — the three variants within the range — are not just different colours. They are completely different atmospheres.
At Viluz you can experience all three. In the same property. Which is an extraordinary thing for a designer to be able to do.
Matera — The Temple Wall
Matera is used in the temple — the great arena space on the property. And the moment you walk in you understand why. Matera is earthy, cave-like, ancient. The texture is raw and intentional, like a wall that has existed for centuries rather than been applied last year. In the temple, where the intention is to strip everything away and bring people back to something primal and still — this wall finish does that work. It is not decorative. It is atmospheric. I stood in that space and felt it shift something. The walls are part of why.
Matera — raw, cave-like lime plaster in the temple, Viluz Marbella
Siena — The Guest Rooms
Siena is the warm ochre variant — Tuscan in tone, deeply Mediterranean, the colour of the Andalucian hills in late afternoon. This is what you see in the guest rooms and living spaces at Viluz. It is why the interiors feel warm rather than clinical, why the light quality inside the suites is so different from a painted white room. Siena absorbs light and gives it back slowly. It creates depth. And in combination with the Microtopping floors and the linen textiles — it is the material that ties the whole interior palette together.
Siena — warm ochre lime plaster, Quan Yin suite, Viluz Marbella
Venezia — The Showroom
Venezia — the polished Venetian plaster variant — is what you see in the Olyra showroom space itself. This is the most refined of the three. Smooth, luminous, with that characteristic depth that only real mineral plaster has. It reads luxurious without being showy. For client-facing spaces, for reception areas, for the kind of room where first impressions matter — this is the finish.
Venezia — polished Venetian plaster, the Olyra showroom salon, Viluz Marbella
Three products within one range. Three completely different results. And seeing all three in real inhabited spaces, in real Mediterranean light, against real furniture and real textiles — this is information you simply cannot get any other way.
"You leave knowing. Not guessing."
Why This Matters for Every Designer Working on the Costa del Sol
Marbella is a market unlike anywhere else in Spain. The budgets are real, the expectations are high, and the clients — many of them international — arrive with references from Mykonos, from Dubai, from the best addresses in London and Milan. They know what a luxury finish looks like. They know when something is not right.
Specifying surfaces for this market blind — from samples and brochures and product pages — is a risk that projects and reputations cannot afford.
What Olyra have created at Viluz removes that risk entirely. The showroom is not a room with panels on the wall. It is 4 hectares of installed, inhabited, real-condition product. You walk on the Microtopping floors. You stand in the Solidro shower. You sit against the Terrae-Calce walls in three different variants, in three different qualities of light, at three different times of day if you want.
For architects and interior designers working on residential and hospitality projects across the Costa del Sol — this is the specification resource that did not exist before. And as the Olyra representative in Marbella, I can arrange a private visit to the Viluz showroom for you and your clients.
Come and walk on the floor before you specify it. It will change how you work.
Frequently Asked Questions
Ideal Work Microcement — Questions Designers Ask
Ideal Work is an Italian manufacturer of architectural surface systems including Microtopping microcement, Solidro waterproof coating and Terrae-Calce natural lime plaster. All three products are installed and available to view at Viluz, a luxury wellness estate 10 to 15 minutes from Marbella, which functions as the Olyra living showroom on the Costa del Sol. Contact Olyra representative Svetlana Dubova at svetlana@olyra-marbella.com to arrange a private visit.
Microtopping is a 3mm cement-polymer floor and wall system applied seamlessly over existing substrates. Solidro is a fully waterproof, epoxy-free surface coating designed for wet rooms and bathrooms. Terrae-Calce is a natural lime wall finish available in three variants — Matera (raw and earthy), Siena (warm ochre) and Venezia (polished Venetian plaster). All three are available through Olyra Marbella.
Yes. Ideal Work Solidro is a fully waterproof microcement system rated for 15 to 20 years of performance in wet rooms, showers and bathrooms. It is installed in the guest suite bathrooms at Viluz Marbella where it has been in daily use in Andalucian heat and humidity. It is available through Olyra, the exclusive Ideal Work representative on the Costa del Sol.
Ideal Work products are showcased through Olyra at Viluz, a private wellness estate in the hills above Marbella. Unlike a traditional showroom, this is a fully inhabited property where every surface — floors, walls and wet rooms — is a real installed Ideal Work product in real daily use. Private visits for architects, designers and developers can be arranged through Olyra representative Svetlana Dubova at svetlana@olyra-marbella.com.
Svetlana Dubova
Interior designer with 17 years of experience in luxury residential and hospitality design, based in Marbella. She is the exclusive Olyra representative on the Costa del Sol. Oakâme reclaimed oak furniture — including the Zola sofa, dining tables and benches — is available through Olyra Marbella.