Indholdsfortegnelse for January 2024 i Homes & Gardens

HOUSE 3 Courtney Smith’s adobe hacienda, located in the hills of Marin County, California, with views over the East Bay, both surprises and delights. The home’s Spanish-influenced architecture is not common in northern California, nor is the bold interior within that sings with colour and pattern. ‘A mash up of East Coast traditional and California cool’ is how Courtney of Courtney B. Smith Design describes her style. And it is a heady mix. ‘The East Coast with its sense of history appreciates provenance, while the West Coast is more casual, approachable and easy breezy,’ she says. ‘In the West, we really connect our interiors to our exteriors, but I use more pattern and colour than many Californian designers, with my projects informed as much by their settings as they are…

When working on a new build, the interior designer’s brief is often to try to install a sense of character. Instead, working on the Roman and Williams-designed Fitzroy in New York, designer Shawn Henderson already had plenty to play with: from the reclaimed oak parquet floor to the oak surrounds around the doors and windows to the copper soaking tub in the bathroom. ‘It’s so unusual to walk into a newly developed building that has such a high level of detailing to it – it was very bespoke and a dream to work with,’ Shawn explains. His own aesthetic, which combines beautifully crafted vintage pieces with modern contemporary, resulting in sophisticated, yet inviting schemes, amalgamated perfectly with the building. It also matched the tastes of the couple who wanted his…

Leena Nasser describes her home as a ‘creative womb’. As a social scientist, writer, artist and dancer, her imagination is the driver behind many of her undertakings, not least her landmarked Upper West Side apartment built in 1915. ‘There’s a joy had in arriving here after a long walk up the stairs to discover this magical space. It has a charm – and the exposed bricks transport you to an older time,’ she says. Leena found her interior designer – Molly Torres Portnof of DATE Interiors – through a recommendation and the pair met for the first time just as Leena was closing on the sale. ‘We had a great connection from the beginning,’ says Molly. ‘The apartment looked very different then with lots of builder-grade finishes but we bonded…

HOUSE 1 Coming upon oversized florals festooned across double-height walls and a pitched ceiling in a East Hampton heritage house feels a little incongruous. And it turns out that the dramatic Josef Frank linen wall treatment is just one in a series of unexpected choices made by the couple who live there with their young family. The far-from-ordinary renovation, overseen by New York-based interior designer Neal Beckstedt, brings a whole new meaning to the concept of ‘old meets new’. It entailed restoring a late-18th-century saltbox house and decorating an adjacent sleek no-frills new build that the couple commissioned from Architecture Outfit. Tasked with marrying these two distinct styles, Neal conceived a farmhouse whose decor recreates the natural world via leaf-laden fabrics and autumnal hues, while the modern structure’s more minimal…

Leaving London and upping sticks for Jersey wasn’t something that interior designer Bryony Richardson and her husband Laurence had planned, but they sought a more rural life after having their first baby. ‘Jersey is a bit like living in an Enid Blyton novel,’ says Bryony. ‘It’s a really magical place to bring up children.’ After months of house hunting, they came across an unusual property: a granite 1840s townhouse replete with its original mottled glass windows, surrounded by cedar trees and coastal views. ‘As we headed down the sweeping hill, we got more and more excited,’ Bryony recalls. Although impressive, the house – Le Rocher – suffered from neglect after being rented out for nearly 40 years, and it had been on the market for a while. ‘No one wanted…

When it comes to decor, designer Emilie Fournet has an uncanny ability to choose paint shades that look as if they’ve always been there. ‘I’m drawn to colours that feel authentic to the period of a house, but also work with more modern elements,’ she explains. This meant that when her clients brought her on board to redesign the interiors of their Georgian Grade II-listed townhouse in London, a key part of the process involved rethinking the house’s palette. ‘The owners described the existing decor as “bankers’ grey” – and were quite happy to erase all memories of it,’ Emilie says. Alongside making the house ‘colourful, cosy and warm’, Emilie’s role included sourcing furniture and fabrics, restoring original features that had been stripped out during the house’s grey era and…

“BY MOVING THE STAIRS, THE LOWER-GROUND AND UPPER-GROUND FLOORS BECAME REALLY USEFUL CONNECTED FAMILY SPACES AND IMPROVED THE WAY THE HOUSE WORKS” There’s a real Oscar Wilde-y feel to this home,’ Jennifer Hamilton, director of The Vawdrey House, says of one of the firm’s latest projects in London. The clients, an Australian couple, had watched as Jennifer and her team worked on their neighbours’ property and acted quickly to appoint the firm for their own home. ‘We get a lot of work through client referrals, but this one was particularly exciting as we had already redeveloped one side of this pair of grand semidetached Georgian houses,’ Jennifer explains. While both houses had the same footprint, their respective owners differed dramatically in taste. ‘We really enjoy the variety of the work…

HOUSE 2 “THE PAST IS ALWAYS PRESENT IN A HISTORIC HOME – THE TRICK IS FIGURING OUT HOW MUCH TO CELEBRATE WHAT CAME BEFORE” The interior designer Nina Farmer didn’t grow up in an old house. Her design language of richly layered interiors punctuated with antiques evolved as she moved through periods in her life. ‘My parents built our first home from scratch. It was in the countryside in Connecticut and there was nothing remotely historic about it,’ she recalls. ‘But then I went to school in New Orleans, which felt very rich and patinaed, and I realised how much places that showed their age appealed to me. My parents met in London, so along with Venice and Paris, it has been a strong influence on my style.’ The Beacon…

HOUSE 5 Having spent her childhood growing up in a 14th-century cottage in Devon, English-born interior designer Elizabeth Hay moved and set up her eponymous design firm in Singapore in 2013 and, for the past 10 years, has been developing her signature ‘quintessentially English and layered’ decorative style. It was this colour and pattern-rich aesthetic that the owners – an Australian and Korean couple – sought for their modern townhouse in East Singapore. Describing it as having ‘typical architecture’ of the 1980s and 1990s Singapore housing development, Elizabeth says the property is ‘more functional rather than architecturally striking’. The owners had been following her work on Instagram for a while. ‘They travel a lot and they wanted to bring an international and multicultural feel, making it layered, bold and cosy.’…

“I WANTED A STRONGER INDOOR-OUTDOOR CONNECTION, LIKE THOSE BROOKLYN HOMES WITH GLASS DOORS THAT OPEN TO BEAUTIFUL PATIOS” When the owners of this 1930s Colonial Revival-style house in Presidio Heights, a family-friendly neighbourhood near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, needed help to create an equally family-friendly interior, they turned to designer Lauren Nelson. Lauren had remodelled the couple’s first home, a small condo back in 2015. ‘Fast-forward to 2020, and we were married, trapped indoors with a one-year-old in said condo during Covid,’ explains the client. ‘We longed for more space and a backyard. When we saw this place, close to friends, and a few blocks from my sister, we had a feeling this was our house.’ On the outside, the property was beautiful, not needing much beyond landscaping and…

The house was a time capsule,’ explains Mike Fisher, creative director and founder of interior design company Studio Indigo, who was commissioned to renovate this Grade II-listed Georgian townhouse in London. ‘It was like stepping back in time. The house hadn’t been decorated since the 1940s – it even had a little bomb damage – with most of the original architectural features from the 1820s still evident.’ The owner, Nathalie Hirst, is a property buyer and, according to Mike, has a good eye in terms of buying in the right location and looking at what the important qualities are in a house. ‘She knows what she likes and doesn’t like, what would add value to the property, and what was important to make it feel special.’ Bringing the property into…

We knew which piece of art would hang above the sitting room fireplace before the house was even built,’ says Taline Findlater of Olivine Design. ‘And it’s no exaggeration to say that we moved walls to accommodate the owner’s dining table. She was bringing it with her from her previous, much larger house and it had precious memories, as well as being the perfect size for large-scale entertaining.’ Taline and co-founder Victoria Gray were commissioned by the owner from the time she, with the architects Technical Design Solutions, were looking at a piece of land in south Oxfordshire, taking in the views, seeing the way the light fell and imaging how the house would evolve. During the planning and construction stages, Taline and Victoria photographed and logged the owner’s art…