Photo: Margot Hartford © 2014 Houzz Design: Natural Flow Interiors http://www.houzz.com/ideabooks/25418674/list/My-Houzz--Casual--Organic-Elegance-in-California

Transitional kitchen photo in Chicago

Photo: Mina Brinkey © 2013 Houzz
Living room - eclectic living room idea in Tampa

Kids' bedroom - bedroom and large traditional girl carpeted and gray floor kids' bedroom idea with multicolored walls

Elegant living room photo in Houston

Photo: Kaia Calhoun © 2017 Houzz
Kids' room - farmhouse kids' room idea

Mid-sized trendy master carpeted and gray floor bedroom photo in Phoenix with beige walls

**I. Spatial Composition & Architectural Volume** This interior operates on a strategy of framed extension, in which the room's perceived volume is borrowed from the garden beyond rather than asserted through internal grandeur. The composition is governed by a rigorous orthogonal discipline: a full-height sliding glazing system, set within a deep oak-lined reveal, functions as both aperture and proscenium, its slender mullions dividing the exterior into a triptych of vegetal planes. The generous depth of that reveal — expressed as a substantial threshold plinth and continuous jamb casing — reads less as trim than as tectonic gesture, giving weight and thickness to the enclosure and reinforcing the sense of a pavilion pressed against a green wall. To the left, a floor-to-ceiling pocketing door of book-matched, quarter-sawn oak establishes a monolithic vertical counterpoint, its recessed flush pull the only interruption of an otherwise uninflected plane; the shallow return of the wall beyond it creates a compressed entry sequence that releases into the primary volume. The flat, shadowless plaster ceiling maintains a neutral lid over the composition, while the furniture plan is deliberately low-slung and horizontal — a deep sectional set parallel to the glazing, a leather-topped ottoman, and a low occasional table — so that no element rises to compete with the sightline. Circulation is implied along the wall's edge, funnelling toward the terrace and its al fresco dining vignette, which acts as the room's terminal focal point and extends the interior axis outward. **II. Materiality, Color & Texture** The palette is a study in low-contrast tonal layering, calibrated within a narrow band of warm neutrals and animated almost entirely by the saturated chlorophyll green of the ivy screen. Rift-cut white oak, finished in a matte oil that reveals rather than glosses its medullary figure, provides the room's structural warmth — appearing in the joinery, the window surround, and the herringbone parquet, whose fine chevron rhythm introduces a subtle graphic pattern at foot level. Walls are treated in what appears to be a woven grasscloth or linen-effect wallcovering in a pale oatmeal tone, its faint horizontal striation catching raking light and lending textile softness to the perimeter. Against this, the seating is upholstered in a tightly woven, undyed linen-cotton blend with a biscuit-tufted seat platform, its slubbed irregularity a deliberate foil to the precision of the millwork. The cushion program provides the composition's only chromatic incident: an indigo-ground ikat or *kasuri* resist-dyed weave, with its blurred weft-broken banding, paired with a heavier blanket-stitched wool in glaucous blue-grey and buff stripes. Underfoot, a hand-knotted silk-and-wool rug in slate and mineral grey carries an attenuated ogee lattice, its lustrous pile providing cool relief beneath the warmer wood tones. The plinth-mounted travertine or reconstituted-stone planter — matte, porous, faintly chalky — and the honed grey stone paving beyond introduce lithic gravity, balancing the prevailing softness with a mineral edge. **III. Lighting, Atmosphere & Style Profile** Illumination here is almost entirely diurnal and indirect: north-oriented or hedge-filtered daylight arrives diffuse and green-cast, washing the space in a soft, even luminance that suppresses hard shadow and privileges texture over drama. The ivory sheer, hung on a discreet recessed track, tempers glare while retaining silhouette legibility, and the adjacent pinch-pleated overdrape in a taupe-bronze silk-blend — with its subtle vertical striation and slight sheen — offers the option of full blackout while contributing a note of drapery-weight formality. Artificial sources are conspicuously concealed; no decorative fixture interrupts the ceiling plane, implying a scheme of recessed low-glare downlights or perimeter cove washing designed to sustain the daytime ambience after dusk. The resulting atmosphere is one of composed reticence — quiet, tactile, and deeply oriented toward the garden. Stylistically, the project synthesises Japandi restraint (the pocketing timber plane, the shadow-gap detailing, the reverence for the framed view) with the material sensuality and drapery conventions of European Soft Modernism, yielding a warm minimalism in which luxury is communicated through joinery tolerance, textile hand, and the disciplined editing of the palette rather than through ornament or statement furniture. It is an interior conceived as a calm neutral ground — an armature for light, landscape, and the slow accretion of daily life.

Gail Owens
Example of a mid-sized minimalist open concept light wood floor family room design in San Diego with gray walls

Photo and interior design by Mary Ryan. Graceful, elegant chaise with pillows and fringe. Please contact me at maryryan@smithe.com for more information and pricing.

Photo and interior design by Mary Ryan. Custom upholstered chaise with pillows and fringed skirt. Please contact me at maryryan@smithe.com for more information and pricing.

A fun, hip kitchen with a mid-century modern vibe. The homeowners wanted a kitchen to make them happy. We think you can't help but smile! NEXT Project Studio Jerry Voloski

Knows as a fainting couch was reupholstered in a more contemporary fabric. Photo By: Denise L. Thuman
Example of a mid-sized classic living room design in Sacramento

This chair has a slightly different take on nailhead trim. Photo by Laura Oglethorpe
Walnut transitional wood solid color square arm living room photo with nailhead trim

Sunroom - traditional sunroom idea in DC Metro

Example of a minimalist home design design in San Diego

**I. Spatial Composition & Architectural Volume** This is a pre-war Manhattan dining room whose proportions have been surgically clarified rather than reinvented. The room reads as a compressed rectilinear volume, its ceiling plane articulated by a shallow dropped soffit and a single exposed transverse beam — a candid acknowledgment of the building's structural grid, left legible rather than concealed behind a coved plaster surround. That beam performs a quiet spatial function: it registers the threshold between the dining zone and the adjoining passage at right, where a sliver of herringbone parquet and a second curtained aperture extend the sightline into a further room, relieving the enclosure and establishing a discreet enfilade. The composition is emphatically axial and symmetrical — chandelier, floral centerpiece, pedestal table and central window mullion align on a single spine — yet the symmetry is deliberately imperfect: the flanking chairs are turned inward on the diagonal, the sideboard weights the left wall, and the artwork on the right hangs off-axis. The result is a Beaux-Arts discipline softened by a decorator's asymmetry. Most consequential is the pelmet, a deep upholstered box valance carried nearly wall-to-wall, which annexes the window into a single monumental glazed field and visually raises the ceiling by drawing the eye above the actual head height of the sash. **II. Materiality, Color & Texture** The palette is a study in monochromatic warmth held within a narrow tonal band of buff, oatmeal, flax and champagne, with saturation kept deliberately low so that texture carries the burden of variety. Underfoot, a wall-to-wall seagrass or sisal matting with a coarse basketweave provides the room's tactile bass note — hard-wearing, faintly agricultural, and set in productive tension with the refined silk-and-linen sheen of the curtains and pelmet. The chairs are a masterstroke of dual upholstery: matte sand-toned fabric on the outside back and a subtle self-striped ottoman weave on the seat and inner face, a device that renders the seating both plush and graphic. Against this envelope of pale neutrals, two dark accents supply the necessary chromatic gravity: the deeply carved, pierced-apron rosewood or mahogany center table, almost Anglo-Indian in its fretwork and baluster pedestal, and the ebonized klismos-splayed chair legs that echo it. The left wall introduces a painted, dry-brushed Gustavian-style commode with lozenge-fretwork doors, its chalky grey-green a cool counterpoint, while gilt frames, a burnished picture light and the silvered chandelier thread a metallic warmth through the whole. **III. Lighting, Atmosphere & Style Profile** Daylight is the room's primary illuminant and it is handled with restraint: the curtains are dressed open but the roman-like sheer inner treatment diffuses the light into a milky, north-facing wash that flattens shadow and flatters the neutral surfaces. Artificial lighting is layered and entirely decorative in expression — the tall, attenuated candle-arm chandelier, hung low and generously scaled, functions as sculpture and as the room's compositional keystone, while two swing-arm brass picture lights provide directional accents that anchor the art as evening focal points. There is no visible downlighting or recessed apparatus; the mood is candlelit, hushed and faintly nocturnal even in daytime. Stylistically the room resolves into what might be termed **Refined Neutral Traditionalism** — an American-classical, Bilhuber-adjacent idiom that marries eighteenth-century Swedish and Anglo-colonial furniture archetypes with contemporary tailoring, tonal upholstery and humble natural-fiber flooring. Its sophistication lies precisely in that calibration: heirloom silhouettes stripped of pattern and color noise, so that carving, weave and gilding become the sole ornamental language.

**I. Spatial Composition & Architectural Volume** This is a galley-adjacent service zone — most likely a scullery or butler's pantry annexed to a primary kitchen — and its power derives from compression rather than expanse. The composition is organized along a single working wall that terminates abruptly in a full-height stainless volume, creating a deliberate collision of cabinetry rhythm and monolithic mass. The upper millwork establishes the governing geometry: a run of glazed-front wall cabinets with recessed shaker-profile stiles and rails, capped by a substantial crown assembly that reads as architectural cornice rather than applied trim. Within the second bay, the designer has inserted a period-correct plate rack with fluted vertical dividers and open glassware shelving, converting storage into ordered display and introducing a fine-grain vertical striation that counterpoints the broader panel field below. The base run answers with inset drawer fronts and applied-molding door panels, its cabinetry set on a shallow toe recess that lets the volume appear to float rather than plinth. The sightline is intentionally foreshortened: the eye travels the countertop plane eastward, is arrested by the refrigerator's tall stainless slab, then released through a sliver of hallway and door casing at the far right — a compressed reveal that implies circulation beyond and prevents the corridor from reading as a dead end. Ceiling height is inferred rather than shown, the cabinetry's soffit-scaled crown suggesting generous vertical proportion held in check by the room's narrow footprint. **II. Materiality, Color & Texture** The palette is a study in achromatic warmth, restrained to four principal materials and disciplined in its saturation. Cabinetry is finished in a soft greige-white — a putty-leaning off-white with faint green-grey undertone — applied in a low-sheen eggshell that absorbs rather than reflects, allowing the millwork profiles to be read through shadow rather than gloss. The backsplash is a honed marble subway field, laid in running bond with tight joints; its veining is delicate, feathered, and grey-toned, providing textural incident without pattern assertion. This continues seamlessly into the countertop, a thick marble slab with a squared eased edge and an integrated undermount trough sink, the material continuity from horizontal to vertical plane reinforcing the wall as a single stone-clad surface. Against this cool mineral field, the stainless steel refrigerator introduces an industrial register — brushed, directional, faintly grey-violet in its reflected light — while polished nickel hardware (bin pulls, cup pulls, knobs, and a wall-mounted bridge faucet with cross handles) supplies punctuating specular highlights at a consistent scale. The floor is the room's tonal anchor: white oak in a herringbone lay, fumed or grey-washed to a driftwood tone that reveals open grain and medullary ray figure. Small warm accents — a butcher-block cutting board with worn patina, amber glass bottles, a persimmon-toned bowl, the pale green of a champagne label — function as chromatic acupuncture within an otherwise desaturated field. **III. Lighting, Atmosphere & Style Profile** Illumination is layered and largely concealed. Ambient daylight enters obliquely from the left, raking across the marble backsplash at a low angle that mobilizes the honed surface's subtle relief and casts the cabinet door profiles into legible shadow. Undercabinet linear lighting washes the countertop and backsplash with a warm, low-kelvin pool, while the refrigerator's interior glazing performs as an unexpected internal lantern — a glowing vitrine that punctures the stainless slab and becomes the composition's focal luminance. This device is the image's most sophisticated gesture: it recasts a utilitarian appliance as an illuminated cabinet of curiosities, echoing the glass-front upper millwork on the opposite wall and completing a diagonal dialogue of lit transparency across the room. The resulting atmosphere is quiet, tempered, and quietly bourgeois — an interior of custodial calm rather than spectacle. Stylistically, the project synthesizes as a **contemporary Anglo-American scullery vernacular**: classical inset millwork and plate-rack joinery inherited from the pre-war service kitchen, reinterpreted through professional-grade stainless equipment, honed rather than polished stone, and a wire-brushed herringbone floor. Call it Refined Utilitarianism — a design position in which historical typology supplies the grammar, industrial hardware supplies the punctuation, and the near-monochrome palette allows craft, profile, and light to carry the entire expressive burden.

The homeowners of this condo sought our assistance when downsizing from a large family home on Howe Sound to a small urban condo in Lower Lonsdale, North Vancouver. They asked us to incorporate many of their precious antiques and art pieces into the new design. Our challenges here were twofold; first, how to deal with the unconventional curved floor plan with vast South facing windows that provide a 180 degree view of downtown Vancouver, and second, how to successfully merge an eclectic collection of antique pieces into a modern setting. We began by updating most of their artwork with new matting and framing. We created a gallery effect by grouping like artwork together and displaying larger pieces on the sections of wall between the windows, lighting them with black wall sconces for a graphic effect. We re-upholstered their antique seating with more contemporary fabrics choices - a gray flannel on their Victorian fainting couch and a fun orange chenille animal print on their Louis style chairs. We selected black as an accent colour for many of the accessories as well as the dining room wall to give the space a sophisticated modern edge. The new pieces that we added, including the sofa, coffee table and dining light fixture are mid century inspired, bridging the gap between old and new. White walls and understated wallpaper provide the perfect backdrop for the colourful mix of antique pieces. Interior Design by Lori Steeves, Simply Home Decorating. Photos by Tracey Ayton Photography