Client Design Story: Organic Modern Retreat

photo by Hailey Bollinger

When you look at this photo, do you think "builder grade home?" Of course not, because I infused some personality into the space! Let's back up, though, and take a walk through this project and the process I took to get it to look like this.

This was the staged picture of the office before my clients bought it. It was every bit of the "builder grade" home you can imagine, until I stepped in to help give it lots of personality!

The first thing we actually did was a paint consult. I chose blues + greens to fit both "nature-inspired" and "modern farmhouse" vibes; more on that in a minute. It wasn't until later that I came to do full service design (all the furniture + decor).

What Clients Wanted: Modern farmhouse without screaming modern farmhouse.

Vibes I Added: Nature-inspired, organic, calm, clean.

Because I had a color palette to go off of, it helped me jump right into the designs. We had picked some moody blues + greens for paint colors throughout the first floor of their home. To add in some "organic" and "calm," I knew I wanted some lighter colored furniture with lots of texture and interesting details for the office and formal dining areas. The desk drawers are wrapped in a raffia texture. The bookcase has a marble column detail. The dining table has a thin metal edge on the bottom of the table top. These are all great ways to add interest into design! Subtle, but powerful. To add some bits of "nature-inspired" vibes, check out all the wall art. My clients already had some house plants, so I made sure to include those in the designs. Also notice the dining room rug--looks like tree grain. So many people are afraid to put rugs in their dining spaces. This is a kid+ pet friendly rug. My clients do have a young child, and this rug proves that you can have good design + be functional for your lifestyle. I did give my clients their "modern farmhouse" by adding those black dining chairs.

Before we order any furniture + decor, my clients always see the designs in a few different formats: 1) The moodboards you saw above; and 2) Renderings. Renderings provide a look into what these pieces will look like to scale, in their own home. One of the things I noticed when doing the office rendering is that I needed an in between size for the rug. The rug I chose was offered by my preferred vendor in several sizes, but not what I would deem the "perfect" size I wanted for the space. Luckily, my vendor does custom sized rugs; my clients were on board and it was so worth the wait!

Here's how the designs turned out! Photos by the talented Hailey Bollinger.

With the living room and eat-in dining area, I focused more on a "shades of blue" concept. These two areas are open to each other. The kitchen island is painted a lighter blue and the two story wall in the living area is a darker shade of blue. You can see the pops of blue throughout. We also brought in Tabor + Co. to help with some semi custom built-ins to help bring some interest into the space, but also functionality! I wanted them painted the same color as the wall for it to be almost seamless. For even more function, their living area has a rug in shades of blue, but it's wool for durability. The eat-in dining area we leaned more into the modern farmhouse look. I actually contacted The Timber Garage to do a custom table because we wanted very specific dimensions for that space and they delivered (literally and figuratively). Notice the added texture on the lambskin cushions for the dining chairs. It's all in the details. Worried about those lambskin cushions with a young child? Their seat doesn't get one (yet)! Chairs are easy to wipe off any messes. My point in bringing these things up is that so many people don't want to consider having a well designed home when they have young children. I will continually point out that you can!

Here are the additional design pieces I included for the living room design: 1) Floorplan + layout; 2) Renderings. These pieces work together with the moodboards to help clients really visualize the design.

Here's how the living room + eat-in dining area turned out!

The home came with blinds throughout, but I wanted to soften things up so we added custom window treatments throughout. To keep a clean and simplistic look, we did ivory linen drapery panels with fun trim matching the colors + vibes of each space.

To see more about getting custom window treatments, check out Behind-the-Scenes Magic of Window Treatements blogpost. You'll see process photos (think before-during-after) from this very project.

Want to see all of the professional pictures Hailey Bollinger Photo captured for this project? Check those out here.

I hope you enjoyed seeing the process of this client design story from start to finish. Stay tuned as I'll be posting more.