Rich Prints, Moody Colors, Vintage Furnishings Warm Maplewood Colonial

A stately 1930s Colonial in Maplewood, New Jersey was in good condition but lacked personality, having been painted bright white in most rooms for resale. The homeowner, who had lived there for about a year with her family, “knows what she likes” and called on Hollie Velten-Lattrell of Spaces by Hollie Velten to “pull things together” and create “balance and harmony.”

Velten-Lattrell, who like many of her clients lived in Brooklyn before moving to New Jersey, brought cohesion and moody warmth along with prints and vintage flair to the downstairs entertaining spaces.

“It’s a pretty small town here in Maplewood, we call it Brooklyn West because of all the city people who move out here to the suburbs,” said Velten-Lattrell. “A lot of our clients are city people who are a little intimidated by inheriting such large floor plans and so much square footage in these old homes, and don’t know how to conquer that after apartment and loft lifting – and also living in the New Jersey suburbs and needing some city identity.”

The client had redone the dining room and kitchen, painting the latter pink, before tapping Velten-Lattrell.

The brief was to create a practical but chic space where the homeowner could entertain friends or family or relax in the evenings — a “cool, grownup space that was not stuffy,” as Velten-Lattrell put it. The pink kitchen became a starting point, with the other rooms harmonizing with it and also matching its “level of personality.”

California native Velten-Lattrell, whose background includes dance, styling, film, and design, developed a playful client intake process using a Tarot-like deck of cards with prompts when she first launched her business and focused on designing children’s rooms. She’s since expanded her design tools to include questions about memories. “Often people are either trying to re-create or run from their memories,” she said. Drawing on all those inputs, Spaces creates a feeling or mood for each room and project.

When asked to bring a meaningful object to the first meeting, the homeowner selected letters her grandfather had written to her grandmother. Other inspirations included childhood memories of wallpaper, Wes Anderson films, Parisian hotels, and Gertrude Stein’s salons.

Velten-Lattrell’s team “wrapped the tiny vestibule with wallpaper” and in the stair hall “played with color that was wild but had an earthiness to it.” In the expansive living room, where there was a lot of blue paint and no overhead lighting, they “leaned into the darkness” and gave it “mood” with pistachio walls, a purple rug, and a caramel sofa.

Taking cues from Victorian and Deco salons, they conjured a variety of zones within the rooms, including a “parlor” in the stair hall and “salon” and “drawing room” seating areas in the living room. Antiques and vintage furniture, Scandinavian lighting, and custom made ottomans and sofas sourced or designed by Velten-Lattrell mix with the client’s art and a green glass-fronted hutch with an arched top, now standing in a corner of the living room.

The colorful yet classic vestibule gives a taste of what is to come with bottle-green woodwork and stylized lily wallpaper in greens and blues from Zak + Fox. In the parlor beyond, the walls are painted dusty pink and the woodwork cool blue.

It acts as an old-fashioned reception room, a transition space where guests are greeted and coats and shoes can be donned or removed. A tramp-art frame encloses a mirror over a vintage wall-hung console, and the cane-backed seat with integrated table and storage under the stair is an antique. The pendant light fixture with striped shades hails from the early 20th century Swedish Grace period.

The salon is designed for chatting over cocktails and playing cards and games. The cozy drawing room facilitates relaxing with a book, snuggling, and watching TV, said Velten-Lattrell. The artwork above the fireplace is a digital piece Velten-Lattrell sourced that hides the screen.

The shaped pelmets at the windows use a Flora Soames fabric, and the pair of chairs with Schumacher blue fringe are upholstered in an ochre cotton velvet from Dedar.

The leafy fabric wrapping the coffee table ottoman comes from House of Hackney, and the fantastical papier-mâché side table next to the sofa is a 1stDibs find. The fan-like matching chairs with rust fringe are Art Deco, and the pair of ottomans are covered in Décors Barbares fabric.

The brass floor lamp with a pleated fabric shade is mid-century Swedish, and a pair of 1960s leaf-shaped sconces are by Finnish designer Svend Aage Holm Sorensen. The floor lamp with the twisting pole and black and white check accents is new from Mackenzie Childs. Above an antique wood cabinet, the rust-colored sconce made of red marble and glass is by Simone & Marcel.

The room’s original Colonial-style mantel was revived with a lively hand-painted pink tile surround that chimes with the pink kitchen. (The surround it replaced was not original.) The hearth is a marble remnant that repeats in the stair niche, where Velten-Lattrell also added a Flos sconce. “We wanted to give it a presence,” she said.

[Photos by Raquel Langworthy]

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