A Real-Life Look at What it Means to Define Lifestyle Through Design
Ask our client – a wife, mother of teens, and oh yes, CEO of an innovative anti-aging skincare company – to define home, and her answer is nuanced. “A place that’s comfortable yet elegant,” she says. “A place that’s cozy and approachable but ratcheted up a bit in terms of style.”
At the time we originally asked that question – during our Lifestyle Review, which helps us home in on clients’ wishes, wants, needs, and aspirations as we launch every new project – our client and her husband each showed us examples of what they liked in terms of styles, colors, and textures. “It was a terrific process,” she says, “because we learned my husband and I actually had slightly different views. Martin helped us define common themes.”
Among those themes: sophisticated rooms you could “plop down in with a glass of something and a book,” she says. A neutral color palette splashed with color. “A calming place,” our client says, “my family could come home to at the end of a busy day that would not be overstimulating.” And then, to further layer it with distinguishing hallmarks, “little bursts of personality to suit our style.”
And that, it turns out, was key. Because our clients were uninterested in a seldom-used formal living room, we designed a relaxation-inducing, chaise-filled, fireplace-warmed study in its place. Located just off the entry foyer where you’d expect a formal living room to be, it announces this is a home ideally suited to its owners’ unique lifestyle. Likewise, second-floor offices – at the top of the stairs, at the head of a corridor leading to privately-situated kids’ bedrooms – allow our client and her full-time staff to work from her home. Naturally, these sleek, light-filled spaces are decorated not only to blend with the rest of the house, but also, by incorporating the exact Pantone shade of her company’s product packaging in furnishings and accessories, to integrate our client’s home and work lives, creating a decorative example of work-life balance.
Like every project we undertake, it’s a timeless testament to beauty, sophistication, comfort, and refinement. It’s also a deeply personal example of our approach to feathering nests: create designs that will define lifestyles, one client, and one home, at a time.
Principal
"We balance great design with a well-run business, which is important to our clients," declares Shea, co-founder of Soucie Horner. "We pride ourselves on our creativity - and the fact that our level of client service and organizational efficiency is second to none."