Entertaining Spaces
WHEN THE HOMEOWNER AND HER HUSBAND BOUGHT THIS EXPANSIVE HOME, THEY KNEW
THEY WERE GOING TO HAVE TO CHANGE THE TRADITIONAL DECOR TO FIT THEIR STYLE,
WHICH THEY DESCRIBED AS CALIFORNIA CASUAL WITH A PENCHANT FOR MINIMALISM.
Unsure where to begin, they hired Barbara Reformat of babsDESIGN to help them put things into perspective.
Reformat allayed the couple’s anxiety of taking on a large-scale project by getting them to focus on bite-size chunks of the redesign, starting with the dining and living rooms.
Design Resources
The Dining Room
Minimalism in a large space isn’t easy, Reformat admits. To prevent the space from looking bare and unfinished, Reformat played with color, light, and texture. The result is a modern, sophisticated look using shades of taupe and warm gray with silver and gold metallic accents used throughout the room. In place of drapery, Reformat chose Roman shades in a warm gray velvet. “I liked mixing the soft gold with accents of silver in the rug and window treatments,” she said.
They explored ways to use the existing dining set, which came with the house, but decided to have a new table custom made. “Surrounding the existing furniture with a sophisticated, modern, and elegant new look was only making the furniture more out of place,” Reformat said. “Sometimes you can blend old with new and sometimes it just doesn’t work.”
It did work with the chairs, however. They reupholstered the existing ten chairs with three different fabrics: a sturdy gray vinyl for the seat, a soft gold fabric for the inside back, and a gray textured velvet for the back. The chairs now surround a 10-foot table made of select solid walnut and veneers inlaid in a design radiating out from the center. Soft matte-gold accent strips wrap around the table and matching sideboard.
Day or night, a modern, gold chandelier with handblown glass bulbs, centered over the table, creates an opulent effect.
The Living Room
In the living room, Reformat used the existing furniture and played with metallic silver and gold textiles to marry the space to the dining room. In addition to a new coat of paint, custom draperies of gray and gold line the windows, and gold geometric wallpaper brightens the back of the built-in bookcase.
Grounding the settee and two club chairs is a round silver shag area rug that sparkles under the modern light fixture, which hangs like a jewel in the center of the room.
A good designer will guide you through the design process and challenge you to step out of your comfort zone without losing sight of your likes and dislikes or your budget. The homeowner envisioned monochromatic but Reformat swayed her. “I think she transitioned me to the grays,” the homeowner said.
The transformation of the dining and living rooms is, in the homeowner’s words, like “night and day.”