This Designer Achieves Quiet Glamour in a Showy Town
NATHAN TURNER: My clients are in their early 30s with a five-year-old daughter, so these old hues feel new to them, and as a child of the 1980s, I remember these colors fondly. I'm also a big lover of "old lady" style. My favorite thing is using granny chintz in an updated way, so the palette of the living room spun out of the colors in the Rosa Bernal floral fabric I chose for the curtains and chairs. Bright colors that pop tend to wear on you after a while; these are muted but not blah, like so many of the 1980s colors. They have depth, clarity, and light, like watercolors, which makes them more sophisticated and timeless. Using softer hues instead of 18 shades of beige is a great way of doing color without being overwhelming.
The wife's study, however, is a lesson in the power of color. Do you call that shade shocking purple?
I call it French lavender, like French blue, because it has so much gray in it. The room has a beautiful bay-window seat, so I wanted it to be a happy place to sit and read. But at the same time, on a cloudy day you don't want a color that's so cheery, it's obnoxious. I wanted a lavender that you might find on vintage cosmetics if you were rummaging through a 1940s dresser. The walls have layers of gray strié, so it looks like they were painted bright lavender 100 years ago and someone has been chain-smoking in the room ever since.
It's a Bel Air Hollywood Regency home from the late 1930s—before people went bonkers building big houses—and it has an old-fashioned layout: a step-down living room, a small kitchen, and a large dining room with French doors opening to the garden. It feels like a setting for a 1950s Slim Aarons photograph, and although my client is a super-fashionable girl, she has that same ladylike spirit.
So would you call a green dining room traditional with a twist?
I used a de Gournay paper, which satisfies the classic vibe but is more frequently seen in blues and grays. This pattern features lily pads and lotus flowers in an almost acid green that complements the colors of the garden outside, so it all feels like one space. The wallpaper was traditional; hanging a Damien Hirst on it makes it modern.
Blue lifts your mood. In the powder room, the walls are a bright robin's-egg hue with trelliswork in a bluish gray, and it has no function other than to look like an exotic Auntie Mame room. In the daughter's bed-room, the blue floral wallpaper and upholstered twin headboards conjure an old-fashioned storybook setting and are a great backdrop for a dresser painted canary yellow. It's a room that can grow up with her. Blue is such a happy, serene color.
Is that a California design mantra?
I'm a fourth-generation native, and certain preppy California things are part of my aesthetic: wicker, rope, navy, and the color of sand. In the upstairs family room, everything — the walls, the trim, the carpet, the window seat, the sofa — is blue or beige, which feels so cozy and casual. And of course there are stripes. I've never met a stripe I didn't like; they're great sidekicks to solids and patterns.
This is the closest I will ever get to a beige room. I fell in love with these Muriel Brandolini fabrics that have slightly metallic prints—not silver and gold, but more bronze or pewter or the lustrous colors you see in seashells. They go so well with the antique European furniture. And the blue keeps the space from being boring. When it comes to turquoise, I like the color of the gemstone and Turkish turquoise, as opposed to Palm Springs turquoise.
How do you manage to pull off so many patterns in one space?
Because all the fabrics were in the same tones, I just kept adding, and nothing offended the others. The secret to mixing prints is getting the palette right. I don't think the scale of a print matters, but the density of the pattern does. An intricate pattern on a headboard is fine, but if you're upholstering walls, the pattern needs breathing room.
I will remind everyone that I'm a child of the '80s, but that doesn't mean I want puffy walls with batting under the fabric. People ask me why I don't just put up paper. But I can feel the texture of an upholstered wall by looking at it. I find it oddly soothing. If you're going to do it, do it all—the walls, the headboard, the curtains, and the shades.
Check out more photos of this vintage Hollywood home »
This story originally appeared in the September 2015 issue of House Beautiful.
By David A. Keeps
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