Restoration Hardware Opens First-ever Store in Quebec

Luxury home furnishings retailer RH (formerly Restoration Hardware) has unveiled its newest Canadian showroom.

Located at Royalmount shopping centre in Montreal, the store spans 49,000 square feet spread over three floors. It includes collections from RH Interiors and RH Modern, as well as outdoor installations and an interior design studio.

“The gallery reflects our quest to continue revolutionizing physical retailing, blurring the lines between residential and retail, indoors and outdoors, home and hospitality,” says RH chair and CEO Gary Friedman.

Commanding the centre of the ground level is a great room with its soaring floor-to-ceiling columns. Along the periphery, barrel-vaulted passageways lead to a classical arrangement of rooms presenting artistic installations of RH collections by internationally acclaimed designers that integrate the brand’s furnishings, lighting and decor.

Occupying the second level is the design studio, which includes private client presentation rooms with state-of-the-art technology, design libraries showcasing a wide assortment of textiles, furniture and lighting finishes, and a rugs showroom that presents an exclusive collection.

Ascending the grand double floating staircase to the third floor, guests will arrive at the restaurant with open focal kitchen clad in natural Taj Mahal stone, flanked by a pair of cascading water walls. It opens onto a landscaped, year-round, sky-lit rooftop park. Influenced by the great classical gardens of Europe, the space is defined by a layered composition of London plane trees, shade canopies, sculptural evergreens and French limestone fire tables.

The exterior is conceptualized as a transparent, multi-level structure. It features an artisanal brick facade in a custom parchment-cream palette — a contemporary new concept for RH. Crafted of hand-selected Italian bricks and finished with classic corbelling, the facade is complemented by an expanse of glass-and-bronze doors that lead to lush garden courtyards and terraces surrounded by a progression of little leaf boxwoods. As night falls, it is transformed through dramatic illumination, highlighting its architectural details and landscaping.

“We believe great architecture amplifies and renders our product and brand more valuable,” says Friedman. “We either find great historical architecture and readapt it, or we build it. RH Montreal is an entirely new design, built from the ground up.”

The new showroom is RH’s first-ever design gallery in Quebec, and the second-largest in the country behind its 65,000-square-foot location in Toronto’s Yorkdale shopping centre.