The yellow wall-mounted letterbox, an emblematic feature of the French landscape, is disappearing from our streets. Hung on the walls of town halls, schools and buildings, they added a familiar touch of yellow to our towns and cities.
La Poste’s wall-mounted letterboxes were part of the décor, almost like a street lamp or a public bench. A reassuring landmark, a discreet but powerful symbol of our everyday French life.
But in recent years, these boxes have been gradually disappearing from shopfronts. La Poste is refocusing its collection points, rationalising and reorganising. It’s an understandable move for a national service… but one that leaves a gaping hole in our streets.
The end of letterboxes: an inevitable transition ?
The familiar yellow letterboxes are gradually disappearing from the French landscape. It’s a decision that’s stirring up debate and emotion, combining digital modernity with an attachment to tradition.
From 1 February 2025, La Poste will begin the definitive withdrawal of its emblematic letterboxes. This measure is a response to a concrete reality: the vertiginous fall in mail volumes. Fifteen years ago, the French were exchanging 18 billion items of mail a year. Today, the figure is barely 6 billion.
This transition primarily affects the most densely populated areas, where collection points can be pooled, but it also raises questions about our relationship to links, to the postal presence and to the anchoring of an object that has become emblematic.
From the street to the home: a symbolic continuity
It’s this iconic yellow letterbox that we wanted to bring into the gardens, on the gates and facades of houses. With its period lines, familiar look and reworked colours, it stands the test of time while adapting to our modern uses.
Far from being a simple practical object, it becomes a wink, a piece of heritage that continues to live on in everyday life. Each box installed is a reminder that beauty sometimes lies in what seems obvious. It’s an incoming letter, a summer postcard, an unexpected parcel. It’s a link.
Keeping the link, preserving the soul... and imagining what comes next
The yellow box is more than an object. It’s a fragment of our collective memory, a Proust’s madeleine screwed to the wall.
By continuing to bring it to life, we want to offer individuals a way of appropriating a piece of French postal history, while bringing a little poetry back into everyday life.
And while it may be gradually disappearing from towns and cities, it can continue to exist… in your own home.
After all, it’s not just a box. It’s a symbol of connection, transmission and trust.
We would be proud to be able, in our own way, to continue this story with La Poste.
Working together to come up with new ways of bringing this heritage to life, updating it, making it ever more accessible… that’s a great prospect we hope to build in the years to come!
