In the lead-up to Milan design week, we have rounded up eight residential and hotel interiors in the Italian city that are united by their use of muted colours and diverse materials.

As the Salone del Mobile furniture fair is set to kick off next week, alongside its surrounding Fuorisalone events programme, these interiors provide a glimpse into some of the city’s design-led apartments, homes and hotels.

Among the featured projects in Italy’s industrial capital is a hybrid home and office space in a former dental studio, a home set within a 200-year-old palazzo and a nunnery-turned-hotel.

This is the latest in our lookbooks series, which provides curated visual inspiration from Dezeen’s archive. For more inspiration see previous lookbooks featuring accent walls, bookshelves and terracotta tiles.

Teorema Milanese, Italy, by Marcante-Testa

With the exception of removing a partition wall to create an open-plan living and dining area, Italian design studio Marcante-Testa looked to maintain the classic layout of this apartment in a 1960s building on Corso Sempione during its renovation.

The studio decorated the apartment in muted colours and used pale grey cipollino tirreno marble as a “carpet” across the sitting area. Elsewhere, a pale lemon-hued cabinet functions as a partition while the bathroom is clad in a maroon-streaked salomè marble.

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Out of the Blue, Italy, by AIM

Italian design studio AIM made liberal use of the colour grey when renovating the interior of this 150-square-metre home in Milan. The concealed staircase that forms the centre of the renovation is framed in the distinctive bluey-grey hue.

And in the dining area, the home’s wooden flooring was decorated with a painted rectangle that aims to visually zone and separate the space from its surroundings. Brass fixtures complement its grey hue, which can also be found across light fixings and ornaments.

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Private apartment, Italy, by Untitled Architecture

A cylindrical staircase and metal structural elements are the focal features of this small apartment, designed by local studio Untitled Architecture.

The apartment has a minimal paired-back aesthetic, with white-painted walls and bleached wood elements contrasted against tiny pops of colour introduced through blue-hued grouting and balustrades.

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CPR Apartment, Italy, by +R Piuerre

Housed in a former dental studio, this hybrid home and office belongs to a young remote-working couple and was designed to combine Milanese modernism with Nordic design.

Two areas of the apartment were colour-coded according to their function, with the bedroom, office and entryway covered in tones of grey while the living area and kitchen are marked by a bright yellow hue. The spaces are connected by a white-painted staircase constructed from sheets of folded metal.

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Room Mate Giulia, Italy, by Patricia Urquiola

Pistachio green was used to colour the dado wall panelling and soft furnishings inside this suite in Milan’s Room Mate Giulia hotel decorated by Spanish designer Patricia Urquiola. Meanwhile, the upper half of the walls and the ceilings are covered in white wallpaper with a geometric grid pattern.

Industrial materials and furnishings, including a galvanised metal shelving unit, were repurposed as boutique storage solutions and room partitions.

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Casa Salvatori, Italy, by Elissa Ossino Studio

This home, designed by Milanese architecture practice Elissa Ossino Studio for the head of Italian stone company Salvatori, brings together marble furnishings and flecked terrazzo floors to link the interior with Salvatori’s stone manufacturing history.

Dulled hues of blue, peach, green and yellow were carried through the interior of the home, which is set within a 200-year-old palazzo in the city’s Brera district.

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House with an iron staircase, Italy, by Roberto Murgia and Valentina Ravara

An iron staircase with a zig-zagging framework reminiscent of structural trusses was installed along one wall of this apartment in the Isola district, designed by Italian architects Roberto Murgia and Valentina Ravara.

The floor of the main living space features a geometric design, achieved through the use of hexagonal cement tiles. Each of the tiles is handmade and coloured in shades of light blue and white to provide tonal variation.

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The Sister Hotel, Italy, by Quincoces-Dragò

Housed in a former 16th-century nunnery in Milan’s city centre, The Sister Hotel features decadent yet eclectic interiors by architecture studio Quincoces-Dragò.

The studio looked to grandiose private townhouses when designing the interiors, opting for moody shades of navy blue and deep green within the bedrooms. Furnishings introduce brighter colours into the suites, including a velvet-upholstered orange sofa.

Find out more about The Sister Hotel ›

This is the latest in our lookbooks series, which provides visual inspiration from Dezeen’s archive. For more inspiration see previous lookbooks featuring accent walls, bookshelves and terracotta tiles.