Tabla de contenidos para Summer 2025 en Traditional Home

My relationship with color and pattern is complicated. In my line of work, I’ve come to appreciate a range of design styles, palettes, and schemes. Each home is an opportunity to see new combinations that the homeowner or family feel are livable and beautiful for them. This summer issue features a slate of homes with beautiful and livable color and pattern. Designer Bria Hammel bathed a full-time Florida residence in fresh white dotted with whispery blues, greens, and blush pinks in patterns that are laid-back and classic, not coastal clichés. In a renovated cabin on Lake Tahoe, designer Matt O’Dorisio eschewed predictability with this mantra: Is it perfect? No. Does it work? Yes. The artful home blends vintage pieces, regional artifacts, and a British approach to fabrics that’s comfy, quirky,…

The physical makeup of sheers is indeed lightweight. But when it comes to visual impact, the thinnest textiles are heavy with style. Sheers enhance summer in a transformative way. They temper the season’s beaming sunlight into soft dapples that gently flicker on every surface they hit. And when exposed to even the faintest whisper of a breeze, sheers gracefully dance, weaving motion into a decorative scheme. Sheers put forth a gamut of design statements. Simple solids push the eye outward to the bounty of gardens and warm-weather growth. Other examples feature fashionable detailing and weightier threads—think embroidered, appliquéd, jute, and digitally printed patterns—that make a solid case for staying indoors to bask in the beauty. Sheers barely exist, and yet they offer so much impact—a window into design that is…

“Vera was really enamored with the idea of re-creating the natural landscape of her youth in Upstate New York, swimming in ponds, running barefoot through wildflower meadows with mud squeezing through her toes,” says landscape architect Michael McGowan. With principal architect Erik Evens, he reinvented this bucolic setting, complete with a natural pond integrated into a swimming pool, for clients Vera and Gary Sutter to enjoy with their children and grandchildren in Montecito, California. Thankfully, about 40 existing 80-year-old coast live oaks provided natural clearings on the property to animate the lifestyle the couple imagined. “Wherever there was a natural clearing under a tree, we used the space,” McGowan says. One clearing became a hillside wildflower meadow for sunset gazing. Another was excavated for the pond, pool, and pool house…

Architectural innovation flourished in New York City in the 1920s as Art Deco skyscrapers dramatically changed the skyline. Luxury apartment buildings in the same ornamented style followed suit, shaping Manhattan’s Park Avenue into one of the most sought-after addresses. Yet, as architect Stephen Morgan and interior designer Marshall Watson discovered after unearthing original drawings of a Park Avenue apartment they were restoring, some of that innovation also led to reinvention. The drawings by famed architect Emery Roth showed that the prewar apartment had been designed as a duplex but was scaled back to a simplex, likely for affordability after the stock market crash in 1929. “There were many rooms that didn’t make any sense,” Watson says. “Our job was to try to keep the character of the Emery Roth style…

Dings and dents. Scratches and scars. They all are the hallmarks of good stories. For the clients of Houston designer Katie Davis, that means a dream home that is finished with layers of beautiful details but able to hold up to the action of their family’s day-to-day. With four energetic children who range from elementary to high school students, Davis’ clients live in a house full of spirit and the most joyous form of noise. “From the beginning, I preached the idea of design that aligned with livable luxury,” Davis says. “There was no reason that the family couldn’t have it all, but they had to be OK with a stain here and some nicks there. That’s what would ultimately make the house feel like a home. I would create…

EMBROIDERED ELEGANCE Laura Cheung Wolf’s Lala Curio marries Asian craft with French haute couture to embellish hand-painted silk wallcoverings with embroidery and pearls. This year, her ornamented coverings are greeting guests at international luxury hotels such as in an installation at the Rosewood Doha in Qatar and a flagship boutique at The Peninsula Hong Kong. lalacurio.com MARMI For decades, Marmi’s legacy has quite literally been written in stone as its alluring slabs of marble, onyx, quartzite, and more have transformed into architectural surfacing. Designers can now skip the guesswork that accompanies the raw materials. Marmi’s new Editions collection presents finished products such as chic fireplace surrounds, apron-front sinks, and soaking tubs—all readily available to meet immediate design needs. The “Tassilo” wall-mount vanity is handsomely executed in Verde Levanto green-and-white marble…

Clara Jung Every room deserves a surprise. Former attorney and now San Francisco design talent Clara Jung is ready to deliver. She isn’t shy about giving traditional style a moment of whimsy with unexpected and delightful details sure to charm. We uphold her approach. bannerdaysf.com Doniphan Moore Dallas is famous for dazzle. The Texas town’s Doniphan Moore glazes design projects with his own dose of glamour. Gold leaf, cut crystal, and mirrored furniture are in Moore’s arsenal for rooms that are ready to shine and poised for nighttime drama. doniphanmoore.com “TRUE GLAMOUR IS ABOUT THE OVERALL COMPOSITION, NOT A SINGLE ELEMENT.”—designer Doniphan Moore Caroline Gidiere Pretty fabrics, palettes that make the heart flutter, and layering to imbue warmth all support interiors for a life in good taste. Birmingham, Alabama, designer…

The legalities of homeownership, such as structural codes, real estate regulations, and financing requirements, are plenty familiar to Kevie Murphy. And the New York attorney-turned-designer also insists that each of her projects upholds one unspoken clause: that interiors are daring and always a lot of fun. At a project in Plandome, New York, on Long Island’s North Shore, Murphy never doubted her clients’ commitment to rooms that were sophisticated with boosts of whimsy. After all, homeowner Marni Gahan and her husband, Michael, fully embraced the scheme that called for surfboards to be hung in the formal living room, drawing attention to the water sport’s primary and iconic equipment. Marni, who hails from Australia, has a strong connection to the ocean’s stand-on-water activity. Her father spent his career as an acclaimed…

Hometowns Waterbury, Connecticut; Kingston, Jamaica; and Los Angeles Summer lovin’ I love the heat. I love the warm rain. I love the flowers of summer. I love summer rainbows. I love the light clothing that just blows in the wind. Design roots When I was growing up, my mother had a small atelier. Men and women would come through the doors with sketches and beautiful fabrics. Most times they were for clothing items; sometimes they were for pillows or draperies. I was always fascinated by design. The draping of fabric, pleating, gathering, cutting. The bravery of mixing patterns and colors together, stepping out on an edge. Old soul My house is 100 years old, so I have to take care of her and keep her looking young. She’s had…

Purple. “It’s OK to say purple. In fact, it’s purple chenille,” quips Los Angeles designer Matt O’Dorisio when asked about the color of the largest piece of furniture—the living room sectional—in the Lake Tahoe house he outfitted for longtime clients. This sort of straightforward confidence, embracing the boldness of “what it is,” as O’Dorisio says, along with having an open mind, a little sense of humor, and a lot of love for the lake that straddles the California-Nevada border, proved to be just the combination that makes the interiors effortlessly chic. “Our inspiration was trying to keep it very comfortable, to not make it too overly ‘done.’ It’s a casual lake house where we wanted nothing too precious and to keep it as authentic as we could,” says O’Dorisio, who…