International Klein Blue, the ultramarine hue favored by mid-century artist Yves Klein, begins as a notoriously fickle pigment that’s hard to work with. Without getting too into the nitty-gritty, it needs a binder to become paint, and with the wrong kind, it dulls—and quickly. But if you get it just right, it’s the kind of color that is naturally enveloping, striking, and grounding all at once. 

Its development was happening around the same time that I.M. Pei and Associates’ Society Hill Towers were being built in the Philadelphia neighborhood of the same name. The concrete trio, constructed in the early 1960s, was a central figure in the urban renewal taking place in Washington Square East at the time. But while the towers often get all the attention, even today, it’s the 37 brick-clad townhomes that anchor the buildings to the rest of the historic area. Each unit rises three stories with a centrally located staircase and is punctuated by arched doorways and clerestory windows, plus a private courtyard and small steel balconies. 

When an empty-nest couple approached Brooklyn-based design firm TBo about helping them renovate one, principals Bretaigne Walliser and Thom Dalmas jumped at the chance.

The owners, who were relocating from nearby Wilmington, Delaware, wanted a home that would feel bright and welcoming and intimate enough for when it was just the two of them, but could flex to accommodate their grown children and grandchildren. Structurally, the townhouse was sound, but the internal systems needed updating and the finishes and layout required a complete overhaul. Original Formica, small ceramic tile, and vinyl were everywhere, deteriorating and worse for wear. The kitchen was narrow, and the bathrooms smaller than what’s preferable these days. One choice Pei made that Walliser wanted to retain, though, was increased privacy as you head upstairs. “The primary idea that he had was that there was social space below on the first two floors, and then it would be increasingly more intimate on the upper floor,” she explains.

Working together with local Hivemind Construction, TBo recast the space in 2023 in a way that honored Pei’s initial vision while adding contemporary, earthy touches that drew on the homeowners’ time living in northern Europe and interest in art. 

First, they removed walls to create easier circulation around the staircase and integrated cabinets with flush doors, which the owners use for pantry goods, cookbooks, wineglasses, and more. After refinishing the original oak flooring (it was, says Walliser, “a crazy orange”), the team took cues from Pei’s choice of material to inform the custom white oak millwork by Loubier Design. Given the smaller scale of mid-century dwellings, this allowed the designer to maximize storage that kept things tidy and navigable, but not too hidden, in the galley kitchen. 

Across the way, Walliser reveals that they tried and tried to cast the concrete countertops and sink in that elusive Yves Klein Blue. “It can’t withstand any heat,” she says, acknowledging its limited alkali resistance. “So when you’re casting concrete, there’s a lot of heat generated from the chemical reaction. If it kills that blue, the pigment just dies and turns gray.” After giving it a few shots, they ended up with cobalt blue, a much stronger and more stable pigment. Then they proceeded to paint the curved base in Benjamin Moore’s Watertown to create one cohesive wow-factor piece. (Bonus: The end caps are cabinets that actually open.) The couple passes a good portion of their time seated nearby, where there are views of their garden through the patio doors.

“One of the challenges we faced was what to do with the stair railing,” the homeowner says. “We had to replace the railing to code, and [had] tried any number of designs when Thom came up with this beautiful, simple metal railing that fits perfectly.” It’s a subtle statement, employing metal and geometry like Pei did, that doesn’t abandon functionality—it’s easy for them to grab as they descend the stairs.

Up those stairs, the primary bedroom is complemented by custom oak wardrobes and vintage light fixtures, like a Murano pendant lamp and Swedish table lamps. The space merges with a small library, where an oak dk3 Royal System hangs opposite an original brick fireplace. Dutch maps, art books, and other vintage ephemera mingle with a Flos kelvin lamp and Mies van der Rohe MR rattan side chair. They are both connected to a primary bath, which is in the darker core of the home. 

Pei’s use of transom-style windows inspired Walliser to employ the technique to bring more light in. “That was a way of borrowing from his language that he had established in the houses and sort of manifesting it in a new way for the owners,” she says. For the bathroom floors, the designers took a page from Bauhaus artist Anni Albers; the cement tile placement is inspired by her work. “We studied her sketches and weavings, along with traditional and modern quilting, and created a series of ‘woven’ tile schemes,” Walliser explains. The idea is mirrored in the other two bathrooms, with patchwork tile in combinations of pink and green and variations on blue. 

From the Scandinavian furnishings and oak wood to Albers textiles, TBo’s thoughtful renovation kept true to the building’s modernist roots without staying stuck in the past. “It’s just very airy; the scale is wonderful,” Walliser says of the new interiors. And that stunning blue makes the homeowners happy every time they see it.

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Sibella Court has a strong aversion to white rooms. So it might seem odd that, for the longest time, the kitchen in her family’s Bundeena, Australia, home featured a trifecta of white subway tile, white counters, and white cabinets (she promises, it wasn’t her doing). The multifaceted product designer and founder of The Society Inc.—a retail line made up of industrial door knockers, haberdashery scissors, vintage-inspired textiles, and more—had inherited the bright and airy space from the previous owners. To get by, she put her own spin on things by bringing blackened steel hardware and shelving into the mix, knowing that one day she’d eventually replace the space with something more her speed. 

Court is fresh off a two-year-long renovation that involved shifting internal walls, replacing most doors and windows, adding decks, demolishing an old garden shed, and constructing an art studio. Still, she managed to make all that newness appear old, cladding the stairs in seagrass carpeting, wrapping poles in thick rope, and mounting interior curtains for rooms in need of a touch more privacy (and insulation).

The process also called for a lot of paint. Court finished the exterior overhaul by drenching the facade in Oilskin from her range of interior paints with Murobond, which she color-matched to the Australian bushland surrounding her house. The only time she stopped herself from taking a roller to her walls was, shockingly, in the kitchen. When she clad the space in reclaimed floorboards from a salvage yard in rural Victoria (her thought being they’d be great for soundproofing and would last forever), she had every intention of painting them. “But then I fell for them as they were,” she says, calling it “a perfect mistake.” Court also left the cabinets, made out of Baltic pine cheese board, in their raw state. That way, the designer says, you can see the bits of rind still on the door fronts. 

She also has a thing for thresholds and “transition” areas. Where the kitchen shifts from cooking zone to the pantry, she added a vintage cast-iron window frame and further defined the spaces by staggering hex terrazzo floor tile within the wood floorboards. 

Just off the kitchen, there’s a breezeway finished with a curved roofline—a nod to some of the other rounded doorways in the house. She maxed out the open hallway with storage: The shelving holds all the vases, jugs, and mixing bowls she’s collected over the past 30 years. “The leech jars are a favorite for flowers, and all the other pieces…I remember where I bought them and they are all the more special for it,” says Court. 

In her art studio, you’ll find an expansive shell collection she started at age 3, with many of her first finds sourced from Smiths Lake, an area three hours’ north of Sydney where her grandparents lived. She still hunts for small treasures on beach excursions, but a generous number of them have also been gifted by friends or acquired through vintage dealers. Her other hobbies—watercolor painting, botanical archiving, concocting natural fragrances—are on full display, too. 

When Court isn’t passing time creatively, she’s spending it on a Pilates machine. The veranda-turned-gym is as welcoming as any other room in the house, with its soothing green paneled walls and swirly hand-marbled cement tile. Not to mention, “it’s situated off our bedroom, so there’s no excuse to not frequent it daily,” says Court. 

You don’t need shelves-on-shelves of shells to remind you you’re at the beach: You can feel the sea air rolling in when the doors are left open. “I am committed to catching the breeze and using it for cooling the house in the warmer months,” says Court. In the morning, she’ll drag cushions out onto the deck to read or play backgammon with her family, but the rest of the day is spent getting a little dirty. After originally building a lower platform perfect for a daybed into the new patio design, she realized her petite greenhouse fit perfectly in the spot. So she pivoted. 

“I have always dreamed of a garden but wondered if I would have time with my work schedule,” Court admits. She considered hiring a professional landscaper at first, but many long hikes introduced her to the area’s native plants, and she decided to dig in herself. Among her gardening go-tos: a leather belt from Wootten, gloves from Sophie Conran, and tools from Japanese Tools Australia. As someone who makes chic utilitarian objects for a living, Court appreciates any good-looking gadgets she comes across. “It’s a world of beautiful tools out there!” she says. 

When the yard was being cleared for construction, Court hastily stockpiled all the sandstone the crew dug up so she could reuse it. Eventually she turned it over to her stonemason, who chipped off pieces for the fireplace hearth in the living room. He left some scraps for Court, who laid them back down outside as stepping stones throughout the garden, carving out a new path that’s all her own. 

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“Romantic, architectural homes” is what Rikke Baumgarten was looking for when she went house hunting with her husband for new space for their family of six. And the 54-year-old creative director and cofounder of Danish fashion brand Baum Und Pferdgarten found exactly that in the historic Carlsberg neighborhood of Copenhagen in 2021.

“I couldn’t see myself in a completely new flat that no one had lived in before. I wanted to instantly feel a history or some kind of background to the place that we lived,” Baumgarten explains. It’s this mentality that actually led to her success in obtaining the house. When they got stuck in a bidding war, she and her husband put in a lower offer on the space but were selected by the owner because the competing couple wanted to get rid of the home’s historic glass ceilings. 

The house, which was built in the late 18th century by architect Oscar Kramp, was a no-brainer for Baumgarten. “It was obvious that the architect who did it had been in Italy, so there were a lot of Italian and south European details, which I thought were very nice,” she explains.

The space is a 3,800-square-foot villa with a sizable garden where Baumgarten spends most of her time when the weather is warm. The family previously lived in an apartment, so she likens the move to a permanent vacation. “It gives me a feeling, especially in the summertime, of being on holiday when, actually, you’re home,” she says.

When it came to decorating the interior, Baumgarten was deliberate about mixing the old and new. Even though the house featured some traditional aspects that her husband was adamant about preserving (the mahogany staircase, the kitchen cabinets), Baumgarten gave them new life by bringing in bright hues and modern pieces.

After a friend suggested the staircase would look good with a lick of paint, Baumgarten swathed it in vermilion. She kept the color story going by layering the wall with a fringed textile piece made by a friend. “I like the mix of things; I like to pick out a beautiful modern piece of art and mix it with vintage furniture, but it all starts with color. If there is a painting where the colors are beautiful, I instantly get interested, and the same with textiles,” she says, describing her design process. 

In the primary bedroom, Baumgarten touts the ceiling as the most beautiful one in the home (unlike the designs downstairs, this one prominently features a geometric pattern) and an inspiring way to start each day. As she rolls out of bed, her attention falls to a set of bookshelves (she got the idea to add the sleek system after a trip to the Museum of Modern Art in New York). “Usually we don’t have bookshelves in a bedroom, but there’s something to it that I really love and it gives me [a sense of] calm and peace,” she says. 

It also helps that Baumgarten has finally settled into a routine in the new home. Her two older children have moved out, and she has been busy investing in her outdoor space. When asked if she’s shopping for anything, Baumgarten laughs and says, “Only flowers for the garden. I invest all my money in gardening at the moment.” 

In the meantime, she dreams of one day expanding the house and connecting it to her atelier next door (right now she has to trek through the yard to get to the studio). “I could see us connecting our kitchen with the atelier, so I’ll stand in the kitchen and cook all this beautiful and tasteful food and then do a small painting or [arrange a bouquet of] flowers,” she says. No matter how often she rotates her art or swaps out the pillows on her living room sofa, fresh flowers will remain a constant. “I’ve always had flowers in my home, even before we moved into this house; growing something from a very small seed is just really magical,” she says.

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In Lauren Liess’s fourth book, Beach Life, the designer goes coastal, particularly to North Carolina’s Outer Banks, where she and her husband stumbled across a run-down 1960s cabin that they couldn’t help but restore, even if they already had their hands full with another reno project. In this excerpt from Beach Life, Liess explains why they couldn’t just walk past the beach cabin of their dreams.

One of our most-walked wanders at the beach in Corolla took us past an empty green cabin built in the late 1960s. It’s one of the oldest houses around, from when Corolla was just a small hunting and fishing village. Surrounded by mossy live oaks and pines, the house feels as if it were meant to be in that forest. Built lovingly by the owner’s parents, the cabin had now sat unused for years, just waiting. Since I have an unceasing urge to fix things up and restore old homes to their former glory, I naturally had many daydreams about the cabin. I wasn’t the only one, though, as there were more than 12 offers on the little house when it finally went on the market. We heard that some of the bidders were planning to tear it down and build new, which made the situation harder to stay away from.

We always told ourselves we wouldn’t get involved if the cabin ever went on the market, because we didn’t want to make going to Corolla about work, but the owner gave us a tour of the inside just before it went up for sale and told us all about how her mother had worked with an architect who had trained under Frank Lloyd Wright to build the perfect little cabin for her and her family. As I looked outside the back screened porch at the swaying pines and glanced into the house at the soaring ceilings, I recognized that scared, quiet feeling inside me…the one that meant we might be entering house renovation roller-coaster territory…again.

I don’t really know why we made an offer. Our biggest fear was that someone would tear it down. There’s a lot of love for this little place around town, and many of us wanted to see it preserved. But it was more than fear that plunged us into our newest adventure; it was also the innate desire in me to see a vision to completion. I had already seen this beautiful vintage-inspired beach-camp way of living in my mind and just couldn’t get it out of my head. I wanted to make that for someone, though I didn’t know who. We were already knee-deep in the Dune House project—featured in the next chapter—which was going well at the time, and the last thing we needed was another project. Unlike our typical approach to buying rehab properties, we had no idea what we would do with the property if our offer was accepted. Would we rent it out as a part of our dream rental property business or sell it to someone who would love it as much as we did? This house has been a wander for us in every sense of the word, with no destination in sight.

When our offer was accepted, we set about fixing up the Beach Cabin, as we came to call it, with the goal of making it look as if we hadn’t done a thing. We let the cabin tell us what it wanted, which was very little. I spent time in the empty house picturing it ever-so-gently revamped. My plans evolved over time, unlike most, which are set from the get-go.

So much of life is painstakingly planned—something highly recommended for real-estate deals—but sometimes, like a soft breeze drifting in through the window begging us to step outside, we are called to do something unplanned, something unknown. We are called to wander. 

Beach Life by Lauren Liess, Amazon ($35)

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Excerpted from the book Beach Life: Home, Heart & the Sea by Lauren Liess. Published by Abrams. © 2024 Lauren Liess.

The post Everyone Wanted to Tear Down This ’60s Beach Cabin—Instead We Revived It appeared first on domino.

When you arrive at Pauline Chardin and her husband François’s house in the South of France, don’t bother looking for the front door. That big sliding window, which sends you right into the middle of the house, is the entrance you should use. It’s an untraditional welcome, sure, but nothing about the couple’s Provence home—and how they ended up there—is ordinary. 

“We found it by chance in the classified ads,” shares Pauline. After having lived in Paris for 15 years, the couple (she’s a photographer and artistic director; he’s a book editor) had grown tired of city life. Pauline, in particular, found herself happier and more creative when close to nature. So when she spotted pictures of a plot of land in the paper, she knew she’d have to go check it out. 

The land had been on the market for a while at that point, and Pauline’s hunch was that the sharp hillside and untamed vegetation was the deal-breaker for other buyers. But for her, it was the draw. “I was set on building a house on stilts on a steep land, so I loved it immediately,” she says. The landscape is garrigue, or made up of a mix of shrubby vegetation common in dry Mediterranean regions. Cutting through the pines, evergreen oaks, thyme, and scorpion brooms are rock formations surrounded by sandy soil and a tiny stream that forms during winter. 

What they wanted was fairly straightforward: a one-story, narrow rectangle building with a covered terrace on two sides. But the feeling they hoped to achieve from such a structure was much more special than that. “I remember reading about the Case Study houses and how they embraced their specific surroundings and seized the opportunity of a warmer climate,” says Pauline, name-checking architects Charles and Ray Eames, who constructed their 1948 Case Study house with minimal materials and maximum volume, all without disturbing the meadow on the property. 

So, at the heart of it all, Pauline and François built the living room and kitchen, which offer views of the landscape in all four directions. Take a left and you’ll find a wing with three south-facing bedrooms (including their 1-year-old’s nursery), a bathroom, and a cellar. Go right and you’ll discover a large office space that the pair share on days they work from home. 

Despite how sleek the house looks, built to seemingly float over the hillside, it’s all about warmth as soon as you step in. The kitchen shelves are lined with Japanese ceramics sourced on their travels, and the cabinet doors are tinted okoumé wood. (Pauline admits they tested their carpenter’s patience by having him experiment with stain color after stain color until they found the perfect one.) A lover of mid-century design, she decided to splurge on the A330S Alvar Aalto lights over the island. “I love the idea of a design from the ’30s that is still in production and relevant today,” says Pauline. 

The okoumé cabinets continue on the wall opposite from the kitchen, right where guests enter the house. It’s their mudroom of sorts, although there isn’t much room left inside the cupboards for friends’ jackets. “My husband and I share a passion for outerwear that has gotten a bit out of hand,” says Pauline. 

Even though the central living area is meant to feel open and expansive, Pauline laid down a patchwork of three rugs to achieve a cozier atmosphere. Shortly after they moved in, they decided to turn their one big sitting room into two smaller lounge areas. “Maybe it’s because we had lived in smaller spaces for years?” Pauline ponders. “Dividing felt more inviting.” 

The couple’s travels to Asia have influenced their design choices as much as California modernism. In the living room, they hung a kantha, a light quilt made from used sari fabrics, to add color and texture to the walls. The polished cement look of homes they encountered in Sri Lanka inspired the floors, while the brass accents were an idea they brought back from India. The dark wood tones, copper rain chains, and verandalike terrace that shields the house from the summer sun are more design decisions that stemmed from special memories. 

A patchwork of antique fabrics are sewn onto the velvet drapes in the nursery, which stars a crib on wheels—their “secret weapon” when they wanted to put their son to sleep in the early days of parenthood. Pauline has an inkling that once he reaches the point where he can run freely outside, nap time will be fuss-free. Adventure is exhausting, after all. “I’m very excited for him to grow up to what feels to me like a kid’s wild paradise,” she says.

The couple’s bedroom is their zen retreat, complete with built-in nightstands clad in the same micro-cement material that covers the bathroom, too. This space is the exact opposite of the small, windowless one in their old Paris apartment. Here, the views are never-ending and Pauline can catch everything happening in the wildest side of the garden. “Sometimes, as I shower, I see a hare, a deer, or a fox passing by,” she shares. 

We don’t blame the couple’s four-legged “neighbors” for sticking around. The abundance of tall grasses outside provide natural habitats for animals. In the couple’s five years of owning the property, they have kept most of it intact, only substituting some of the plantings for more drought-resistant, self-seeding varieties that can have a life of their own. They have also avoided putting up a fence, which allows wildlife to get up close and personal. “We even saw a wolf the other day!” says Pauline. 

When selecting a place for the swimming pool, Pauline chose a spot that is surrounded by tall trees, which help keep the area cool and heighten their awareness of nature while taking a dip. On one side, they built a sculptural wall that’s ideal for lounging on and looking at the reflection of leaves in the water. Finding a good spot to enjoy the sunset is a must, too, but it varies depending on the time of year. “Sometimes it may be in the shower, in the kitchen, on the terrace, or up in the back garden,” says Pauline. 

Growing up in northern France, Pauline remembers her earliest experiences with the outdoors as being cold and uncomfortable—it wasn’t a place where you’d simply hang out. “I wanted to create the exact opposite,” she says. “In this home, nature is the backdrop everywhere, light is plentiful, and the outside is almost as comfortable as the inside.”

The Goods

Karin Bath Towel, Autumn Sonata ($88)

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Loops Rug, Nordic Knots ($2,995)

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Cestita Table Lamp, Lumens ($725)

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Nelson Saucer Criss Cross Bubble Pendant, Lumens (from $316)

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The post When This Couple Built Their Dream Home in Provence, They Purposefully Left Out the Front Door appeared first on domino.

“The electric blue I really love is very hard to find,” says Jessica Walsh. “In real life, it’s usually a shade too subdued.” When she had the legs of her Prouvé dining chairs painted, Walsh felt the cobalt blue also came out “just a bit off.” A partner at eponymous New York design agency Sagmeister & Walsh, she speaks so precisely about color that it could be her native language. When Walsh and her husband, filmmaker Zak Mulligan, found their current home—a 1,400-square-foot loft in Chelsea—it was the palette that pulled her in. “The space was awful in an awesome way,” she says. “The previous owner was inspired by Studio 54, so there were pink walls, steps, and platforms everywhere.”

That ability to see opportunity in places others might overlook is one of Walsh’s greatest strengths. She met legendary designer Stefan Sagmeister after sending him an unsolicited email asking for advice. He was so impressed with her portfolio that he hired her at age 23 and made her a partner at 25. Some of Walsh’s best-known work is imbued with an element of life-as-art, from her candy-colored Instagram account to her 12 Kinds of Kindness project with designer and illustrator Timothy Goodman.

The pair created the 12-step program to cultivate empathy and documented their experimental relationship in 40 Days of Dating—a website, book, and soon-to-be movie. (As it happens, Goodman and Walsh turned out to be better collaborators than lovers, although they remain good friends.) 

Fittingly, her home is also a collaboration in progress. Aleksandra Kingo, a colleague, made the artwork above the sofa. “I love using that space to feature a friend, and I plan on switching out the art regularly,” says Walsh. For the renovation, she worked with architect Eric Mailaender of Resistance Design to open up the layout and let in light. Together, they balanced his pragmatism with her love of bright blues, true reds, and sunshine yellows. “Eric pulled me toward a cleaner, more Scandinavian style,” she explains. The open closet was her idea—“I wanted to keep all my colorful things on display”—but she took Mailaender’s suggestion to complement it with closed storage. He also devised the black wall shelf, a feature that obscures the television and creates a display area.

Interesting projects and people regularly rotate through Walsh’s home. Every month, she hosts “Ladies, Wine & Design” nights—open to anyone who applies, they fill up a year in advance. The modern salons bring together six creative women to hash out real-life issues, from depression and anxiety to business branding, with Walsh acting as mentor. The success of these meetings is a testament to how seamlessly Walsh combines different aspects of life and business. “In my work, the overall picture looks refined,” she says, “but when you look closer, you start to see the hand-painting and imperfections.” Much like seeking that perfect blue, she enjoys the search as much as finding exactly what she wants.

This story first appeared in the Spring 2017 issue of Domino with the headline “Primary Cool.”

The post The Perfect Electric Blue Does Exist—And It Pops Up All Over This Creative’s NYC Apartment appeared first on domino.

“Family party house” is what Sara Gilbane calls her summer retreat in Locust Valley, Long Island. The description is apt, given that her backyard features a 75-by-25-foot homemade slip-and-slide—popular with her children, 6-year-old Virginia and 3-year-old James, as well as adventurous guests. A Rhode Island School of Design alumna and protégée of Celerie Kemble, Gilbane broke out on her own in 2008 and launched a line of furniture, fabric, and wallpaper in 2014.

Gilbane’s welcoming weekend outpost, just an hour’s drive from her home base in downtown Manhattan, channels her breezy, classic bohemian aesthetic in a kick-off-your-shoes-and-grab-a-drink kind of way. Family collectibles add a warm, personal touch throughout the space—including her grandmother’s china; handed-down Turkish and Oriental rugs; and a large American flag that belonged to her grandfather, who raised it every morning at his Rhode Island home. “We don’t have a flagpole, so we drape it over the stairs,” says Gilbane.

The sunroom, she jokes, is “where all rattan goes to die” (in the form of sunshades and vintage furniture). The white IKEA sofa in the living room, accessorized with Lee Jofa custom throw pillows and washable slipcovers, also hints at her laid-back approach. “I want to relax and not get upset if someone spills a bit of wine,” she says with a laugh. Whimsical pieces, like a giant clay leopard she found on the vintage-rich Dixie Highway in Florida, also keep the house from feeling “too serious.”

The color palette—a mix of bright pastels and bold primaries—nods to the natural surroundings, especially the striking sunset views. “From every room in our house, you can see the sun just drop into the Sound,” says Gilbane. Inspired, she painted the living room walls a light pink. “Sometimes it’s so pale it’s almost white, and then at night it gets brighter.”

Sharing the property is a refurbished squash court owned by her best friend, who has two kids the same age as Virginia and James. “We do spring breaks and summers together—it’s built-in babysitting, which is kind of the dream,” says Gilbane. “She wanted her weekend place to be fun—you walk in, have a cocktail, sleep too late.” Working with white walls as a backdrop, Gilbane added tailored furniture in blues, greens, and zebra prints. “If people are having fun, there’s an aura in your space,” she explains. In other words, a home that’s always ready to host a party.

5 Ideas on Color 

• Draw out the palette from your natural surroundings.
• Go large and abstract with art for a big impact.
• Don’t genderize pink; it’s for everyone.
• Use black as a neutral—such as around bright picture frames and in furniture bases.
• For adding color on a budget, buy inexpensive items in white or lighter shades and splurge on higher-quality color pieces.

This story first appeared in the Spring 2017 issue of Domino with the headline “Pattern Perfect.”

The post This Long Island Vacation Home Is a Lesson in Mixing Patterns the Cool, Bohemian Way appeared first on domino.

Chef Sara Kramer could already see it: harvesting tender fennel bulbs from tiered raised beds, pulling juicy Blenheim apricots from fruiting trees, and snipping stems of mystical protea to scatter about in vases. She envisioned cooking over an open fire, serving butterflied fish under a dipping sun.

But in reality, when she started to consider a renovation of her charming home in L.A.’s Echo Park neighborhood five years ago—which she now shares with partner Emil DeRosa and their dog, Kevin—what she had was an unmanageable tangle of bushes and other plant life. She had given new life to a garage on the small property but still yearned for a home garden. Having grown up in New York (she was the opening chef of Glasserie in Brooklyn), she had never come this close to her dream outdoor space.

Kramer headed west in 2014, where she and her business partner, Sarah Hymanson, opened Kismet in 2017. The Los Feliz restaurant, featuring Mediterranean and California as well as Sephardic foodways, has carved a solid spot among the city’s vibrant constellation of restaurants, dishing up malawach, marinated feta, and a lot of Persian crispy rice over the past seven years. The eatery is so beloved that it inspired the duo’s first cookbook, which hits shelves this week. It’s packed with the spirited vegetable-heavy dishes they’ve become so well known for. The idea of being able to grow the very essence of her work at home meant something special to Kramer.

“The thing that drew me to the house in the first place was the outside space,” she remembers. “It just seemed so out of reach coming from New York, that when it appeared as an option, I was like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe that I can have this here.’” At the time she bought the house, it was more wild than well kept, so she slotted the idea of a refresh away for when she was ready. 

The circa-1938 home had been through a thoughtful renovation even before she purchased it, which included a refreshed kitchen with retro orange Caesarstone countertops and glossy multicolored IKEA cabinets (a combination she wouldn’t have chosen herself but loves nonetheless). Kramer could tell that the space had been taken care of even if the door molding was mismatched. Plus there was something about the unique wood frame outlining the transition between the kitchen and living/dining area that was sort of sweet.

She initially tackled a minimal renovation of the garage to accommodate a roommate by closing up the ceiling and putting in a window. “It was meant to be a rentable space, which is why it has a little kitchenette and counter area next to the bathroom,” she explains. 

But, after the first cohort of renters moved out, and with nobody moving in during the pandemic, she decided to make the garage space her primary suite—and hasn’t looked back. “I just wanted the room to be pretty serene,” she says. Inspired by a home and designer she met in New Zealand, Kramer decided to have cork flooring installed and added sliding doors that open onto the deck overlooking her lush yard. The big design moment she wanted came by way of her friend Leonard Bessemer of Objects for Objects. A verdantly hued custom wardrobe with built-in bookshelves takes up nearly an entire wall; it was storage that was sorely needed in the home (there’s only one other closet in the whole place). 

Throughout the rest of the home are clean white walls decorated mostly with art from Summertime Gallery, a Brooklyn nonprofit that shows work from a range of neurodiverse artists. Kramer counts paintings by Max Karnig and prints by Luke Gilford and Charlie Engman among her collection. Other prized wood pieces, like a treasured Danish hutch she received from a friend’s family and a Yamaha piano, are on display throughout. (Little-known fact: Kramer was once on Broadway—she was in Mamma Mia when she was 18.)

When she was ready to tackle the exterior in 2022, she knew exactly who to call: her neighbor David Godshall, principal of landscape architecture and design studio Terremoto. The termite-ridden back deck had to be reconstructed, and Kramer took the opportunity to repaint the home’s exterior in Dunn-Edwards’s Travertine, rebuild a protruding rock wall in the front (it had always scratched her car before), enclose the front yard for her dog, and install a gravel driveway.

After all the practical updates were taken care of, they could focus on the more dramatic transformations. “[Terremoto’s] work is so incredible that I couldn’t not go for it and really make it spectacular back there,” she says. From the back patio stairs unfurls an epic outdoor cooking setup, complete with a fire brick grill, where Kramer can char vegetables over an open flame, and a showstopping James Herman–designed oven. “I love cooking outdoors; I really wanted to make that special,” she adds.

Nearby, she serves fava bean pesto, citrus, and tomatoes to her guests atop a locally made table. But descending further, wood and gravel stairs reveals the pièce de résistance: a wood-clad hot tub and outdoor shower, flanked by jasmine and passion fruit. She and DeRosa enjoy sunsets from the tub, but Kramer reveals that her “favorite time to use it is when it’s lightly raining.” It’s just as she imagined it so many years prior.

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In between picking fabrics and testing stains for a pair of first-time homeowners, Lauren Piscione, the designer behind LP Creative and cofounder of Galerie Was, would chat all things wedding related with the L.A.-based couple. Both Piscione and her clients were newly engaged at the time and in the thralls of planning. “Together, we’d toil over where to have our prospective weddings,” recalls Piscione, “and at first, they were kind of all over the map.” As time went on and Piscione’s work for the duo wrapped up, they told her they had finally landed on a venue: their home. 

“We knew we wanted to do something super-intimate and low-key with our closest friends and family there to celebrate, and it just felt right to do it in our most favorite place,” says one of the homeowners, who works as an energy healer, while her soon-to-be husband is a musician. 

The backyard is prime for a large party. The property is nestled on the border of Malibu and the Palisades, and if you look into the distance, you can see Catalina Island. After bouncing between different bungalows in the Venice neighborhood for nearly five years, their dream was to be closer to nature and a little further from the action, and also to have a yard with room for their pup to run. “We like to joke that we moved for our dog,” she shares.

It only took one Instagram Story photo to sell the couple on the four-bedroom house. Their broker had posted the listing with a shot of the accordion glass doors opening up to the outdoor space. But the interior’s beachy farmhouse features (sliding barn doors, shiplap, and the like) were ultimately the reason they reached out to Piscione. “There was even a cowbell in the kitchen,” recalls the designer with a cringe. Her warm and earthy style was much more their speed. Piscione’s challenge was to completely transform the house without embarking on a gut renovation that would force them back into a temporary rental. 

The designer got to work on stripping the shiplap boards, opting instead to coat the walls in her go-to plaster treatment, which usually starts out with Benjamin Moore’s Fossil color. From there, she and her team will tediously tweak the mix as needed, perhaps making it 20 percent cooler or 10 percent warmer, until it suits the space. “People don’t realize that if your home is really green and lush outside, the paint on the inside of your house could actually skew a little green,” Piscione shares. “Or if it’s overlooking the ocean and you get a lot of sky, it could be a little blue or cooler.” 

While they were at it, they also tore out a bulky cabinet in the corner of the living room that was blocking the light from the window. The designer shifted the TV to the adjacent wall (keeping it out of sight with flush doors) and situated a low oak-wood bench in the nook. “We really wanted this bench to have an organic edge because everything felt really angular,” she shares. On that same note, Piscione plopped a tree sourced from The Haus Plant into the bench. “It adds the perfect wabi-sabi touch,” says the homeowner.

To top off the corner, Piscione helped the couple source a work by Austyn Weiner, an artist they’d long admired. It just so happened that Piscione is friends with Weiner and scored them another painting for their hallway, too. 

The only lingering remnants of the home’s farmhouse past are the tongue-and-groove paneled ceilings. But after a quick sandblasting that removed the white paint and revealed the natural pine boards, the detailing looked right at home in the new space. “Now the warmth that radiates from it is felt throughout the home,” says the client. While the kitchen layout remained the same, the designer swapped out the stark white cabinets for sandy-colored ones inspired by Malibu’s beaches and replaced the black marble counters with durable Taj Mahal quartzite.

Piscione tapped her side business, Galerie Was, when sourcing the furniture for the house. The cozy Clam chair and Brutalist French stool in the living room, as well as the Guillerme et Chambron chairs and Swedish case piece in the dining area, were just a few of the vintage gems she tracked down. 

Throughout the project, the designer’s clients joked that her palette is 50 shades of brown (even though they were totally on board with the color scheme). Piscione doesn’t deny it, but to her, it’s the slight nuances in each shade that make a room feel dynamic. The built-in headboard in the primary bedroom, for instance, is clad in a cinnamon-hued Rose Uniacke fabric, while the burl-wood nightstands skew more caramel. “It’s a lot of different layers of materials, but all in the brown family,” Piscione says.  

Two out of the four bedrooms now serve as his-and-her offices. For the energy healer, Piscione placed an antique Japanese tea table in the heart of the space, leaving plenty of room around it for her meditation sessions. Meanwhile, the designer had a custom desk and low bookcases crafted for the musician, freeing up the walls so he can hang artwork and instruments. 

“We really feel we have a place that is a physical manifestation of who we are and how we feel,” shares the homeowner. And they’re excited to let guests in on the experience later this summer, too. They plan on keeping everything the way that it is for the wedding day, aside from a few tweaks to the backyard for logistics. “It truly is perfect the way it is,” she says.

The Goods

Mesa, Armadillo (from $945)

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1970s Ingo Maurer Uchiwa Bamboo Wall Light Sconce Germany, Chairish ($3,750)

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Akari 7A, Noguchi Shop ($500)

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Re-Edition Sheepskin Clam Chair by Arnold Madsen, 1stDibs ($8,515)

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