– There’s almost nothing here that’s standard. We’ve made everything so that it fits to the millimetre and is exactly how we wanted it, says Tommy Dølplads. He is a designer and built and designed the interior of the cabin near Rena in Norway with his partner, Einar Myhre, who is a cabinetmaker.

– We wanted a nice, stringent modern look throughout. It was also important that the floor, and especially the floor in the hallway, was very resilient. After all, this is a cabin, so we’ll be bringing in water and snow on our outdoor shoes. So we couldn’t really have chosen a better material than slate, he explains.

Unlike in many other cabins, they went for rectangular slate slabs.

– The whole cabin has a very stringent, modern design. For us, it was never an option to go for anything other than rectangular tiles in the hallway, Tommy Dølplads says.

He’s also puzzled about the link many people make between slate, stone paving and mountain cabins.

– I’ve never thought of slate as a typical traditional cabin product. For us, it was solely the characteristics of the slate that made us choose it, mainly the colour and surface. We’ve chosen a rather rough surface that’s a perfect match for the rest of the cabin’s design, he says.

They have chosen dark floor tiles in slate for the cabin’s hallway. In addition, the cabin has interior decoration and plants in green and pine brown. See how you can get the warm and exclusive feel of black slate tiles also in your bathroom.

– The colour palette is intended to reflect the landscape outdoors. We have a very clear colour palette indoors, with a lot of black and grey, with contrasts in light wood. It’s quite incredible that we could obtain of a local natural product of such high quality, which also matched our requirements, says Tommy Dølplads.

Combining slate with wood was also something that came completely naturally.

– Here in Østerdalen there is a lot of rock and forest, and a lot of pine around the cabin. We wanted to pull this into the cabin, for the sake of the atmosphere, the colours and the materials, Tommy Dølplads says.

– There’s no doubt that the most important thing for us was to use a material in the hallway that looked good, Tommy Dølplads says.

– Luckily, this was no problem and the slate is perfect for the look we wanted and the other materials in the cabin.

– The hallway is the place in the house we use most while wearing outdoor shoes. And this includes shoes that can leave marks, such as ski boots. A slate floor can withstand water, snow and hard-soled shoes, so that was also important for us, Tommy Dølplads says.

– When our focus was on a natural cabin, in harmony with the natural environment, it would have seemed wrong to use imported stone. Luckily, we didn’t need to, a happy Tommy Dølplads concludes.