We bought the property as a working hairdressing salon. No pool, no backyard worth speaking of, no real outdoor space at all — just good bones, the right location, and a courtyard waiting to become something.
The transformation from salon to villa compound is the project we've been quietly building together for the last few years.
The brief we wrote ourselves was simple: as serious travellers ourselves, what would we want to walk into? Somewhere that feels lived-in rather than staged. Somewhere with the design considered down to the cabinet hardware, but with the easy familiarity of a Bajan home — pots that actually cook, a fridge that's actually stocked, hosts you can actually reach.
The property is design-led and beautifully finished, and it's also somewhere you can actually live for a week — kids in the pool, wet towels on the railing, the kitchen used properly, the gazebo as somewhere you sit not somewhere you photograph.
Cozy, well thought out, and well situated. The kind of place where you can experience Barbados properly and still feel completely at home.
That's One Maxwell.
A Barbadian husband-and-wife team. He runs operations. She runs design. Together they built the property they wanted to find when they travelled.
Born and raised in St Andrew on the rural east coast. Studied engineering in Trinidad for three years, then five years in St Maarten across engineering and operational management. He's currently Operations Excellence Manager for a regional fuel and energy company, and about to step into a General Manager role covering Grenada and St Vincent.
His professional life is built on systems, attention to detail, and getting operations to run quietly in the background. The same instincts run through One Maxwell — he's the one walking the property before every check-in, noticing the things guests would only notice if they were wrong, and the one most likely to answer a 9pm WhatsApp message with a recommendation, a fix, or a story.
He's also genuinely handy with a drill. Every repair, mounting, and small fix at One Maxwell has come from him. When he's not working, he's watching Manchester United or back in St Andrew visiting his grandmothers.
Also Barbadian born and raised. Studied Chemical Engineering at UCL in London for four years before returning home. She's currently Strategy and Performance Manager at Banks Breweries, where she's spent the last several years rotating through engineering, finance, sales and marketing, and now strategy — which is a longer way of saying she sees the whole picture of how a business works.
She's also the reason One Maxwell looks the way it does. The editorial palette, the brass fixtures, the wordmark on the pool wall, the decision to skip every Caribbean cliché — those are Khadija's calls. She'd been quietly hunting for the right short-term rental property for years before they found this one; the design language was already half-built in her head by the time they closed.
Outside the property, she's a serious traveller and an even more serious eater — happiest in a city she doesn't know, ordering something she's never tried.
One Maxwell's design is deliberately editorial and restrained, which differentiates it from the brightly coloured, locally-styled vacation rentals that dominate the Caribbean market. The brief was straightforward: travel magazine spread, not Airbnb listing.
The property is one coherent design system expressed in two registers. Both units share the same DNA — editorial restraint, brass accents, monochrome with botanical green as the only colour, statement lighting as a recurring move.
Within that shared vocabulary, the Main House leans cooler — charcoal, dark hardwood, brushed brass. The Cottage leans warmer — timber-look tile, oak slat detailing, lighter neutrals, gold accents. Bathrooms invert the rule. Two related design statements in conversation, not one identical aesthetic.
The wordmark started as an architectural decision — a flat white wall at the head of the pool that needed something on it. It became the brand anchor. The same letterforms now do duty in the header of this website, in our welcome notes, and on the basket we leave on the kitchen counter when you arrive.
You can find One Maxwell on Airbnb. We're a Superhost, Top 10% home on the Estate listing, and we don't expect that to change — Airbnb does its job well.
What booking direct gets you is the same property, the same calendar, the same standards, but a direct line to the people who run it. No platform service fee on the guest side. No fee on our side either, which is why we're able to be slightly more flexible on rate, on early check-in, on long-stay terms, and on the occasional small ask that doesn't quite fit a marketplace.
For now, booking direct is an enquiry-first process. You send us your dates; we reply personally, usually within the hour; if we're available, we send a quote and confirm payment. It's a more deliberate flow, and it's the one we're starting with on purpose.