The Insider: On Deadline, Designers Pull Off Chic, Comfortable Interior for Family's Weekend Home
In mid-winter, a Park Slope couple with two teenagers and a dog purchased a vacation home in Springs, a laid-back hamlet on Long Island’s South Fork, and wanted it fully furnished by Memorial Day.
In mid-winter, a Park Slope couple with two teenagers and a dog purchased a vacation home in Springs, a laid-back hamlet on Long Island’s South Fork, and wanted it fully furnished by Memorial Day.
Not only did Gowanus-based Jesse Parris-Lamb carry out the job in four months, they created an interior of serene beauty, pared down and subtly colored, with vintage and contemporary furnishings that also happen to be family- and pet-friendly.
“They wanted it to be comfortable and super functional, to get out of the swimming pool and sit in a chair and not ruin the fabric,” said Whitney Parris-Lamb. She and Amanda Jesse met at Pratt Institute more than a decade ago while studying for their masters degrees in interior design and formed their boutique design firm in 2014.
“Mid-century design was one of the reference points,” Parris-Lamb recalled. “They particularly mentioned the Brady Bunch, and they asked for a bohemian feel without, as they put it, going full-on Grateful Dead.”
It helped, in meeting the tight deadline, that the house was only a few years old and “in essentially mint condition,” Parris-Lamb said. “We didn’t even paint.” Architecturally dramatic, with a postmodern feel, their clients had bought it from the architect who designed it.
“The house is really modern, so we respected the envelope,” Jesse said. Expanses of glass ensure that the rooms, most with a woodsy backdrop or a view of the sparkling swimming pool, feel open to their surroundings.
The designers retained a few of the existing pieces, notably a space-age floating fireplace and an elaborately strung light fixture in the main living space, and relied on immediately available vintage pieces from such sources as Chairish and 1stdibs rather than ordering custom items that might have taken many weeks to arrive.
Carefully considered color was key. “When you enter the house, you’re facing the main dining area, which is the most neutral space. It’s about texture and natural materials,” Parris-Lamb said. “There’s a progression of color and saturation as you move through the house, still a dusty, earthy palette but with pink and burgundy and soft cornflower blue.”
The designers fitted a rattan daybed from Anthropologie with a tufted French mattress in the living room. A sofa from Montauk Sofa (seen in top photo) was covered with handwoven fabric from Brooklyn’s Studio Four.
Two vintage chairs by Danish mid-century designer Børge Mogensen look as beautiful from the back as the front.
The capacious coffee table came from Australian company Pop and Scott.
Taking their cue from the deep browns of the woodwork, the designers focused on texture in the dining room, spec-ing a credenza with a raffia front, a chunky woven sisal rug and a pendant lamp with a jute-wrapped frame from Nickey Kehoe in Los Angeles.
Vintage chairs were reupholstered in a combination of two outdoor fabrics.
A stone-top dining table from L.A.’s Croft House brings black punctuation to the area.
The den/family room, where the family gathers to watch football and do puzzles, faces the driveway and has fewer windows. To compensate, the designers pumped up the color quotient with a striped sectional sofa from Roche Bobois that has a vaguely Moroccan feel.
The master bedroom is textured and neutral. The bench at the foot of the bed, with a handwoven seat, came from Brooklyn’s Peg Woodworking. A lamp from Lostine sits on a contemporary nightstand, perfectly proportioned with respect to the low platform bed.
A hand-thrown pottery lamp from Mt. Washington Pottery of Los Angeles sits on a vintage mid-century dresser with its original enamel pulls.
In the guest room, a contemporary desk with a mid-century vibe from Chelsea Textiles stands out for its bold eggplant color.
The bedside lamp and the unusual wall lamp above the desk were both sourced from Lostine.
A giant wicker sectional from Restoration Hardware fit within two inches under the pool pergola. The designers had custom cushions made from Peter Dunham outdoor fabric.
[Photos by Nicole Franzen]
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