Villa One at the One & Only Palmilla hotel review - Los Cabos, Mexico

2014’s Hurricane Odile brought a lot of destruction to Cabo, temporarily shuttering many of its premier hotels and resorts. Since then, many of these properties have staged comebacks and this, along with the opening of several new outlets, has made the popular vacation region buzzier than ever. One & Only Palmilla’s contribution to the Los Cabos boom is the recently opened Villa One, a 14,000-square-foot hacienda-style escape that offers not only privacy but also an entirely different design narrative from the rest of the resort.

Built into a cliff, the four-bedroom villa is a modern take on an open-air glass-house with no shortage of floor-to-ceiling glass doors and windows that look out to the Sea of Cortez. Inside,  designers Anderson/Miller (who worked on Public Chicago and the Four Seasons Punta Mita) created warm and bright spaces by sourcing local materials such as Mexican wood and stones for all surfaces as well as specialty items like the carved vanities, inset Spanish tiles, and oversized bathtubs. In fact, a lot of design elements were custom-made for the project like the  folded cove ceiling in the master bedroom and the metal fixture that hangs over the dining table with its two rows of Bocci 28s lamps. 

While there’s a luxurious elegance to the overall aesthetic of the villa, whimsical surprises can be found at every turn such as a bowl filled with colourful Day-of-the-Dead skulls, book-matched wall-to-wall onyx headboards, and in-water hanging day beds in the patio.