Indholdsfortegnelse for September/October 2025 i Veranda

Visit veranda.com/color-of-the-year for decorating ideas, designer tips, shopping guides, and more.…

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“Instead of just replicating the original, I wanted to play with finishes and give the Madeleine more of an edge.”—DESIGNER AND CO-OWNER JESSICA PAKZAD BENNETT “In college, I was with my mom at a flea market when I fell in love with this étagère [right],” recalls Jessica Pakzad Bennett, shown (above left) with her mother and Ebanista co-owner and cofounder Melinda Pakzad. Drawn to its unique shape and patinaed gold finish, she says, “I knew I’d give it new life one day.” And her mother’s repeated attempts to “steal” the étagère for her design projects reassured Bennett. “I call my mom the ‘goddess of good taste,’” Bennett says. “If she liked it, I knew others would, too.” “An étagère can lean soft and feminine,” says Bennett, who designed two new finishes…

PRESENTED BY In an age of visual overload, there’s something profoundly luxurious about holding back. The softest pinks, the quietest grays—these aren’t just background players, but tools of intentional design. In the hands of a thoughtful eye, the nuanced hues of Benjamin Moore® bring a sense of calm clarity to a space, crafting an atmosphere that is both emotionally grounding and aesthetically refined. Here, color doesn’t compete—it composes. SOFT LIVING When a room whispers rather than shouts, it invites you to exhale. Shades like Tissue Pink 1163 don’t demand attention—they offer it, helping create a meditative environment that softens the edges of everyday life. These tones make room for quiet rituals, deep focus, and meaningful pause. TRIED AND TRUE A shade like Coventry Gray HC-169 is more than neutral—it’s dependable,…

YVONNE TSIKATA couldn’t fathom leaving her roses behind. When she and her husband moved from McLean, Virginia, to nearby Great Falls in 2017, Tsikata dug up 10 rose plants and packed them right alongside everything else. Her new home offered more space to plot and play with her growing collection, but it was wildly overgrown with scrub, invasive grasses, and encroaching bamboo thickets—not exactly a blank canvas. She didn’t quite know where to start. “But I knew I had my roses,” Tsikata says. Today she cares for more than 300 varieties of roses, which put on a spectacular show from around late April to early November. Forty-two are climbers, scrambling up obelisks, arbors, trees, a pergola, and even the house’s chimney. Shrubs, floribundas, and English roses erupt in pastel shades…

STRIKING GOLD Interior design: Martyn Lawrence Bullard; martynlawrencebullard.com. Pages 78–79 Rug: Stark; starkcarpet.com. Sofa: MLB Atelier; martynlawrencebullard.com. Coffee table: Galerie Glustin; glustin.net. Sofa and dining chair fabric: Dedar; dedar.com. Table: Invisible Collection; theinvisiblecollection.com. Dining chairs: Eternity Modern; eternitymodern.com. Pages 80–81 Wallcovering: De Gournay; degournay.com. Rug: Stark. Sofa, coffee table, and chairs: MLB Atelier. Page 82 (top) Benches: Kifu Paris; kifuparis.com. Chandelier: Maison Gerard; maisongerard.com. Page 83 Chandelier: Trueing; trueing.com. Credenza: Rune; rune.nyc. Dining table: Invisible Collection. Dining chairs: Philip Nimmo; philipnimmodesign.com. Page 84 Table: Studio Van den Akker; studiovandenakker.com. Page 85 (top left) Wallcovering: Gracie; graciestudio.com. Page 85 (top right) Rug: Carl Marias Carpet Design; carpetdesign.info. Page 85 (middle left) Wallcovering: Phillip Jeffries; phillipjeffries.com. Mirror: Galerie Glustin. Sconces: Apparatus; apparatusstudio.com. Page 85 (middle right) Table: John Boone Collections; johnbooneinc.com. Chair…

ABOUT A YEAR AGO, I received what initially felt like troubling news: “You shouldn’t wear black. It’s not invited to your party,” House of Colour Stylist Hannah Garber told me at my color analysis appointment, where she determined I was an “Autumn”—and Autumns do not wear black. This type of color analysis, during which stylists identify a palette that best complements your natural skin tones, has been around for decades (just ask your mother or grandmother) and recently came back into vogue among younger generations on social media. On the recommendation of the Design Social Studio’s Brooks Morrison, I decided to give it a try—and wow, was it enlightening. While I was shocked, at first, to learn navy, olive, and butter yellow are my neutrals, I’ve received more compliments—and have…

THE FUTURISTS DRAGA & AUREL The creative force that is Draga & Aurel originates in the duo’s intense dedication to “finding the maximum of expression in the material,” says cofounder Draga Obradovic. Originally from Serbia and Germany, respectively, Obradovic and Aurel K. Basedow met in Como, becoming partners in life and work and establishing their atelier there in 2007. Esteemed for a multidisciplinary approach informed by their backgrounds in fine art and textile design, they have created iconic pieces like the Jade table and Joy lamp, both crafted of epoxy resin. Though each piece is extensively researched, it must be able to stand on aesthetic power alone. Paraphrasing Louise Bourgeois, Obradovic says, “If I have to explain myself, I’ve failed.” THE NATURALISTS PROMEMORIA A promemoria is a keeper of memory.…

A NEW CLASS OF BAKELITE collectors is emerging, and it’s hardly the swap-meet set. The spoils: a bangle or three with inlaid geometrics, perhaps a marbled ring with bursts of bezel-set gemstones. That the jewelry’s hero material—the quotidian staple named for its early-1900s inventor Leo Baekeland—is plastic, and entirely synthetic, is precisely the point. From his Lowcountry studio, designer Mark Davis turns vintage castoffs (from dominoes to lamps to billiard balls) into imaginative jewels as a way of salvaging beauty from a material that can never be recycled. And from New York to Palm Beach, his devotees are lining up.…

JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING in my home has a backstory,” says design and color consultant Patrick O’Donnell, known as Paddy to his family and friends. And friends he has—including over 63,000 Instagram followers, with whom he regularly converses via video, comments, and DMs. O’Donnell, an international brand ambassador for English paint and wallpaper company Farrow & Ball, has made a career of dispensing color advice and answering with confidence that most elusive of questions: “What color should I paint this room?” He owes his popularity, in part, to his friendliness and approachability—characteristics that no doubt help him form instant connections with his clients, about half of whom he advises from afar over video calls. These brief consultations require him to decode their color sensibilities in mere minutes. “Most people are incredibly…

WITHIN THE hallowed halls of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, hang priceless masterpieces—works by Vermeer, da Vinci, Morisot, Monet, Rembrandt. Yet one of the museum’s most treasured collections lies not inside its neoclassical walls, but beyond them. Out of the public eye, tucked between the building’s exterior and what the museum’s architect John Russell Pope conceived of as “moat walls,” is something just as enticing: plants nurtured, hand-watered, and meticulously cultivated by a dedicated team. Among them are showy varieties of ficus, aglaonema, and bromeliads for rotunda displays; the museum’s prized azaleas; and—increasingly valuable—a collection of small plants that could easily be mistaken for weeds. For the last four years, Solomon Foster, the National Gallery’s senior horticulturist and manager of the museum’s 11 greenhouses, has tended to these…

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WHILE SARAH Traver admits that the mist-mantled coast of the Pacific Northwest and the sun-streaked waterways of the Venetian Lagoon may not seem like soulmates on the surface, a bridge connects them, she says. A glass one. The second-generation owner of Traver Gallery—Seattle’s premier glass art exhibition space—puts one pin in her hometown. She puts the other in Murano, Italy, a tight clutch of seven linked islands that by the late 13th century had become glassmaking’s shimmering fountainhead. Murano was where aventurine glass was invented; where beads, mirrors, and chandeliers traveled to far-flung palazzos and châteaus as calling cards of Venetian mastery. But the techniques themselves, Traver says, had historically been tightly guarded secrets. And the craftsmen were trained as interpreters of another’s vision—even as maestros, the highest designation—but not encouraged…

Mary Lohman knew people were watching. It was no small feat to take on renovating the Whedon Farwell House, arguably the most iconic home in Hudson, Ohio, a town whose historic district is included in the National Register of Historic Places and is chockablock with Greek Revival, Federal, and Victorian beauties anchored by a town green. This circa-1826 Federal and Italianate gem sits off the road at a quirky angle, down the street from the clock tower—as prominent as it gets. “I always dreamed of living in a historic house,” says Mary, who with her husband, Larry, raised their three nowgrown children in a nearby 1980s faux-Tudor cottage. The couple had long eyed this home in particular, owned by friends of theirs. “If you ever want to sell, you don’t…

“Everything in moderation” is a sensible motto, except when it comes to joy, which gains nothing from half measures. Yet cultivating joy—whether in life or in design—requires more than just going in and blithely pulling out all the stops. It takes a wise mixture of freedom and restraint, training and trust. When Donna and Scott Miller first went searching for a creative team to help with their new house in the Preston Hollow neighborhood of Dallas, they were largely looking for a practical update (for instance, closing off an open dining room and creating a back kitchen). “Scott and I are super casual,” Donna says, “not decorator types at all.” But after they connected with Jan Showers & Associates, the project began to blossom, and before long had grown to…