Asked about their work, interior designers almost unanimously accent the homeowners who hire them. “It’s about the client, not me,” is a common refrain. Translation: Design has become much more of a collaborative business. What, then, do they do with their own favorite spaces, compelled by personal vision instead of team effort? Carolina Home + Garden caught 15 regional interior designers at home.
Ashley Smith’s Living Room
Benson & Babb Interiors, Hendersonville
In 1925, when Ashley Smith’s Leicester-area cottage was first built, the living room would have been used just as its name suggests. But combine a high-energy modern family with a lively social scene — including two nine-year-old boys, two Lab puppies, and frequent guests — “and entertaining happens all over the house, from the kitchen to the family room to the breakfast room to the pool deck,” says Smith.
The living room, then, “is where I retire at night,” he reveals. There, Smith reads and organizes Cub Scout duties (he’s a den leader). Green is the busy designer’s signature color, appearing here in Sherwin Williams’ dark, handsome “Eminent Bronze” shade. His other passion, which he shares with wife Tracy, is collecting original art, especially pottery. A red-and-turquoise series from ceramics enclave Seagrove, North Carolina, has a place of honor on top of the 18th-century French secrétaire à abattant.
But that priceless flip-top writing cabinet isn’t the room’s only “wow” piece. Others, both literally and conceptually, come from all over: a ceramic horse from the Portland Japanese Garden, a hand-wrought chandelier made to look like a spread of roots, and a painting by one of the artists at Open Hearts (a local group that serves adults with developmental disabilities).
Draperies and sitting pieces, all from Benson & Babb, are sumptuously textured but mostly neutral (the exception is a chair upholstered in a subtle red-leopard print). “My house is surprisingly devoid of pattern,” says Smith.
Actually it’s not so surprising: other designers say the same. “I love patterns,” he muses, “but I get my fill at work.” At home, where peace must, eventually, reign, “I almost always choose a solid.”
Cheryl Smith’s Kitchen
Cheryl Smith Associates
Interior Design, Hendersonville
When Cheryl Smith remarks that “everything flows” off the simple kitchen in her Hendersonville home, she’s talking about her favorite space’s easy proximity to the adjacent dining and sitting rooms. But the water metaphor also acknowledges the feel she was after when she chose the sleek cherry cabinetry that edges the walls and granite prep island.
“I wanted it to look like the wood you see in yachts,” she says. “Those beautiful, simple slabs with the gentle rounded edges.”
Appliances and even counter tops are stainless steel. Smith enjoys the contemporary feel — and also, she admits, “it’s easy to clean.” She created the cozy room’s window valance by sewing intersecting strips of red, blue and yellow ribbon into a rectangular piece of cloth. The effect recalls a Mondrian painting: geometric with lots of white space.
In her design business, Smith is always poring over various fabrics, patterns and textures. Maybe that’s why she shies away from busy color schemes on her own walls: “At home, I tend to go for solids.”
One inescapable piece of whimsy, though, is a vivid replica of the map Walter Cronkite used as a backdrop during his anchoring heyday. “That’s all you see in the breakfast area,” says Smith. The piece lends depth to the routine of watching the day’s news with her husband Bryant. “It’s fun for us to see the news on TV and then turn to the map to study the related locales.”
Mary Adams’ Library
Cocoon Interior Design, Brevard
With 2,500 books in their home library and at least that many more in storage, Mary Adams and her husband Craig have certain standards when it comes to literature.
Their treasured tomes number countless art, history and travel books; classics, antiques guides and family Bibles; photography treasuries and quality novels. And their sights ride high. The couple’s dream room is the formal library at Biltmore Estate. “We joke that it’s getting harder and harder for books to make the cut to be in our collection,” says Adams.
Their home library is a former bedroom, and the renovation of that room is part of a larger home expansion still in progress. However, one senses that the mood of the space won’t change much. A pair of nut-brown, upholstered leather chairs look well settled. Every wall is gridded with custom, dark-stained shelving.
A linen-shaded contemporary lamp, white French doors, and a touching portrait of their son as a child are light touches in a room otherwise designed to recall “an English or Scottish hunting retreat in a country manor,” according to Adams. The old-style flintlock rifles displayed were built by Craig, a commercial artist and oil painter.
Theirs is a family steeped in a kind of living history. “We have a couple-hundred years’ worth of family collections to showcase,” says Adams. “Everything in this room has a story.”
Personal as it is, the space also lures guests: “Whoever comes to the house is drawn there. We’ll look up during a gathering and see 10 people in the library — and it is not a large room.”
Dan Lawter Ferebee’s Living Room
Bravo! Outdoor and Interior Design Marketplace, Tryon
Dan Lawter Ferebee’s charm-laden 1930s cottage in the Melrose section of downtown Tryon proves that big style can happen in small spaces. Craving something new, he purchased a place that, at 1,200 square feet, is about a third of the size of his former home (featured four years ago in Carolina Home + Garden).
But size isn’t everything. Ferebee gained a sanctuary he describes as “very reminiscent of the Cotswolds in England,” on a street where three churches peal their various bells, to sweet and nostalgic effect. His business, Bravo!, is significantly devoted to designing outdoor rooms; however, the main area of Ferebee’s cottage remains his own special place.
A coffered ceiling outlines the basic dignity of the room, were fine furniture — a Pearson Bergere chair, a Sarreid bench, and a Baker sofa slipcovered in Brunschwig & Fils fabric — communes serenely with framed original watercolors and big-name landscapes.
One of these works, above the brick fireplace, is topped with a small sculptural sign urging guests to “Celebrate.” (A bamboo table under the mantel is set up as a small bar.) “I guess I should have taken that down before the photo shoot,” says Ferebee, laughter in his voice.
Indeed not. Like the umbrella stand molded into the shape of a red-jacketed horseman — a nod, perhaps, to Tryon’s equestrian roots — the “Celebrate” emblem is a miniature touch that adds major whimsy.
Kathryn Greeley’s Kitchen
Kathryn Greeley Designs, Waynesville
A figurative porcelain-tile backsplash engineers the scene in Kathryn Greeley’s wide-open kitchen. Pictured are a vintner, a baker and a cheese maker: they appear as dignified adjutants of Greeley herself, a celebrated entertainer and collector of Flow Blue china (plus many other items in the blue-and-white English Country color scheme).
Aspects of marvelously appointed Chestnut Cottage are featured in the pages of Greeley’s new book, The Collected Tabletop. However, her style is not about the still shot.
“There’s a lot of energy in this kitchen,” she says. “I spend most of my life in here.” Glossy-white ceilings and walls toss light on “wow” pieces — including a wine holder made from rare terracotta drain pipes, a glass-fronted refrigerator and a long prep island/bar topped with deep-stained maple. Lush, dark-blue leather chairs from Greeley’s private label flank the island, making it a charming spot for guests to lounge while their hostess prepares dinner. “I figured if I gave them a comfy place to sit, they’d stay out of my work corridor,” she teases with a throaty laugh.
And, too, her husband, an alumnus of the Big Ten Football Conference, is over 6’6” tall. “You can’t have a rickety bar stool for Wells Greeley to sit on,” declares Kathryn.
Her other passion, gardening, manifests both symbolically and literally in the kitchen. The antique copper kettle on the stove echoes an outdoor boxwood topiary sculpted in the shape of a teapot. And the island is a great space for flower arranging — roses, green Bells of Ireland, and, of course, blue-and-white hydrangeas.
Jean Greeson’s Dining Room
Greeson & Fast Design,
Asheville, Kansas City, and Ft. Lauderdale
Jean Greeson has a green thumb, but that doesn’t mean she spends every moment digging in the dirt, or that she does the stark, eco-chic thing when designing her own spaces. Instead, it’s a deep, sweet love of the color itself, especially in its most timeless incarnation: bright emerald.
That shade vibrates from every nook of the formal dining room in her 1898 Hendersonville farmhouse (shared with husband Don). A reproduction Thibaut wallpaper, thick with birds and blooms, is paired with an embroidered silk floral drapery. Emerald appears again on the area rug, a relatively sparse leaf design against a cream background.
“I have no fear of patterns,” declares Greeson. Indeed, not even the upholstered seats on her dining-room-table chairs match exactly. And yet the room’s overall effect is utterly harmonious — a gracious, light-infused garden, sans bugs.
Greeson grew up in and around elegant older homes in Kansas City, and the appreciation for finely aged objects never left her. “I just really appreciate beautiful things,” she says, pointing out the room’s chandelier and wall sconces, both made of antique crystal.
In one photo, rescue dog Mary, a demure-looking Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, gazes toward one of the room’s signature pieces, the round central table with glass-tile insets and a hand-blown Mercury glass base. A handsome antique server is another anchor. However, the entire pink-and-green room was inspired by a much smaller item — a hand-painted candy jar that Greeson’s grandmother, whom she never knew, got at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.
“It’s such a sentimental piece,” says the designer. “It’s gone through so much, and remained in perfect condition.”
Harry and Joe Deaton’s Patio
Harry Deaton Interiors, Hendersonville
With trademark humor, Harrietta “Harry” Deaton reveals that the deep chairs and chaises (from Dreamweaver) arranged on her spacious back patio “might be more comfortable than some of the things we sit on inside the house.”
That’s only natural for an avid gardener who says she “lives outside.” The airy space she created with her husband and business partner Joe has two sections, open and covered, and the latter part is furnished with a hot tub and fireplace, allowing the couple to enjoy the patio practically any time of year — “you know, unless it’s stupid-cold outside: zero weather.”
The award-winning designer says she hardly ever does a client’s house anymore that doesn’t include appointing an “outdoor room.” Making it personal, though, is important. At home, Deaton’s self-professed signature color, red, shows up everywhere from throw pillows to shutters to outdoor drapes to potted impatiens to the bandannas tied around the necks of the couple’s beloved dogs. “Toby and Lucy are a huge part of our lives,” says Deaton.
Affection also enters her tone when she talks about the many-paned bay window that visually connects the patio to the house: “We salvaged all of those windows from a building downtown.” A flagstone floor and an outdoor chandelier — for parties, she hangs an entire collection of them — add stately points of elegance. But in the end, it must be a “feel-good” space, says Deaton. “It’s all about bringing the inside out.”
Kathryn Long’s Master Bedroom
Ambiance Interiors, Asheville
One thinks of Claudette Colbert, curled swan-like in a satin chair, or crimson-lipped Joan Crawford smothered in a snowy boa. Glamorous white dress and décor defined 1930s Hollywood, and Kathryn Long has revived the color in the light-drenched master bedroom of her Biltmore Lake home.
A big fan of that romantic era, Long was meticulous in her selection of furnishings and fabrics. A bed from a small artisan maker, discovered at the world-renowned North Carolina furniture venue High Point Market, features an unusual headboard: it’s upholstered in an eggshell shade and framed in light wood. Simple, crisp window treatments are made from what she describes as “the perfect linen.”
But before the trimming could commence, Long had to enact some Crawford-style drama, knocking out part of the wall to lift the space from the doldrums. “The room,” she declares, “was dead” when she first purchased the house, built in 2005.
“It faced north, windows all on one side, with gray walls and gray carpet.” But their addition of two windows on either side of the bed admits the majestic western glow.
Using a lot of white means playing with light, and Long points out the difference between the too-stark tones of that shade and her preference for its softer gradations. The carpet, she says, “is sandy-colored, a very nice Masland,” the walls a mohair shade.
Endearing romantic touches include a dazzling Venetian chandelier and floral throw pillows.
Linda Constable’s Kitchen
Ambiance Interiors, Asheville
Way bolder than pink but far less obvious than red, the unusual color that tops the prep island and counter in Linda Constable’s merry kitchen is best pegged as “radish.” At least, that’s how the designer ventures to describe it; she also confesses that the finish is Formica instead of the trendier granite.
“Formica is not a ‘forever’ material,” she says. But for anyone on a budget, “it’s really not a bad way to go.” Especially when the hue is this rich and unexpected. It’s a fanciful shade, reminiscent of antique roses or, perhaps, the color of the fox’s ascot in the Beatrix Potter tale. Painted beadboard — white-ish on the island and wainscoting, darkening to lavender on the ceiling — fulfills the interior theme: pure cottage.
With her husband Blair Jones, Constable renovated the Depression-era North Buncombe home from the studs up. Two small bedrooms were fused into one, a dropped ceiling was revived to its former elevation, and fluorescent lighting was banished for good. The overall goal? “We un-muddled it.”
She’s been collecting vintage textiles since she was a teenager; retro “just sings to me,” says Constable, who in turn sings the praises of the many “wonderful fabrics” available to her through Ambiance Interiors. One pattern, a sage and rose-violet floral, appears in a window valance and in the bar-seat cushions. Original art, including a much-loved pastel drawing by Blair’s mother, blooms on the walls.
Such infallible guest traps as ottoman-garnished upholstered chairs make the kitchen more of a lounge than a workroom. “It’s very happy in here,” concedes Constable.
Talli Roberts’ Dining Room
Talli Roberts Interior Design, Asheville
Gifted with a mild voice and gentle demeanor, Talli Roberts manifests those qualities in her signature work. Creating places of peace is a natural niche in these frantic, nail-biting times: “It tends to be what people come to me for,” she says. “It’s so important nowadays to come home to a space of pure rest.”
She’s accomplished that in her own mid-century rancher in North Asheville’s woodsy Beaverdam area. The dining room is typically soft and glowing; however, Roberts isn’t above breaking a few rules. “You’re not supposed to use dark colors in small places,” she explains. “But there’s so much natural light in this room that it works.” The walls are an earthy dark-mushroom hue; the long window’s curtain has a print that picks up the portabella and also includes shades of sand, heather gray, and coffee.
Roberts chose the linen treatment precisely because it echoed colors in the adjoining kitchen and living room: “It’s the unifying factor.”
For balance, all the furnishings are transparent, including a mid-century-modern glass table (surrounded by new IKEA chairs) and glass bookshelves. Roberts is an avid re-purposer of vintage items — thus the pendant lamp she made herself out of a found shade.
An appropriately sentimental touch is the vase of fresh stargazer lilies displayed on the table — the same flower she and her husband Derek had at their wedding. Fluffy calico cat Ginger not only picks up the light-and-dark aesthetic — her blissful expression is living proof of her mistress’s skill.
Kitty and Keven McCammon’s Barn Loft
Blue Ridge Design, Rutherfordton
The goal was a grand estate that would overlook Kitty and Keven McCammon’s 169-acre longhorn-cattle farm in Rutherfordton. They lived in semi-converted quarters above their barn while planning that dream house — and gradually decided that the pastoral space was where their hearts belonged after all.
Big-house plans abandoned, they converted 1,600 square feet of the upper barn into their current unique abode. (The empty-nest couple, a pair of chic-looking grandparents, also renovated a lower apartment for company.) The great room was a joint effort, as are the spaces they co-design for clients. Keven is a technology whiz; the McCammons are known for integrating sharp science with décor.
“It’s the strong point of our business,” says Kitty. “We design home theaters, automated window treatments, sound systems. We believe technology should become part of the aesthetic, not just an add-on.”
Their own flat-screen TV is smartly embedded in a hip frame of corrugated steel. But the home is a barn, after all, and rustic embellishments get their due, including a fragrant cedar ceiling, a Bentwood rocker, a taxidermy fox-on-a-tree-limb that gazes out the main window onto the spreading acres, and a sideboard carved from a walnut tree that once grew at Keven’s mother’s Tennessee home.
The structure is gray with red trim, and the obvious indoor nod to the classic barn scheme is a cranberry-hued leather couch from Four Hands, its lines as proud and sleek as a dressage saddle.
“From where we are, we can hear my horse right below us, stomping in the stall,” says Kitty. “We love this space. We never want to go back to a big house.”
Krista Washam LaBlue, Spiral Staircase
Krista Washam LaBlue Interior Design, Asheville
Vertically inclined construction, the better to reduce a home’s earthen footprint, has grown savvy and hip. But in Krista Washam LaBlue’s 4,000-square-foot home and business space — the center suite of Historic Kenilworth Inn — that steep majesty was built in long ago. A dramatic spiral staircase accesses three floors, the top loft capped with natural skylights.
The living quarters she shares with daughter Rebekkah are tucked in the background. Clients are treated to the full thrust of the designer’s oeuvre when they enter the richly appointed entryway. “First impressions,” she notes, “make lasting memories. The space is set up this way so that people can understand what they’re capable of doing in their own homes.”
In particular, LaBlue encourages clients to display their most beloved possessions in creative ways that “let people know what they’re all about.” Her own unusual collections include antique glass batons, canes, and sock darners.
Quilts, too: one prominent piece was recently scored at Brunk Auctions. LaBlue runs a full-service business but is particularly known as a textiles queen; her bolts of exotic fabric are arrayed in the uppermost work room almost as reverently as the priceless 19th-century paintings hung — with full gallery lighting — two storeys down.
Historic rugs and other accents in deep, royal red keep splendid company with the suite’s original wood — and also reflect LaBlue’s outgoing personality. In the same way she seems to easily blend work and home, her relationship with clients often evolves into a seamless flow.
“You might have finished a project for someone six months ago, but suddenly you’ll come upon a piece of art you know they’d love. You never really say goodbye.”
Warren Fluharty’s
Living Room
Warren Fluharty Designs, Asheville
It’s a suite full of rare, luxury antiques — including a chicly distressed Italian chest, Blanc-de-Chine vases, and cunningly attained Lalique perfume bottles. And yet the living room in Warren Fluharty’s home near Weaverville looks bold, not breakable. The stone fireplace surround extends to that entire wall, anchored by a massive pair of Chinese vases.
The house was built in 1962 by well-known area architect J. Bertram King, and the angled boat ceiling still looks cutting-edge. A gilt sunburst mirror, its rays more saber-like than shining, maintains the mid-century-modern aesthetic while vouchsafing passage for the rest of the room’s eureka pieces.
Chief among these is an outsized, vaguely campy painting by former UNCA art director Tucker Cooke depicting fiery neo-classical angels. Smoldering in the entryway is a vintage ’70s album poster of Barbra Streisand; in the framed black-and-white photo, the singer sports flowing locks, a macramé peasant blouse and an assessing, diva-like stare.
It’s likely Babs approves of the living room’s travertine marble floor, three-legged Saladino table, buff-colored Billy Baldwin slipper chairs, and the ornate gilt desk that once sat in the lobby of a French hotel. All is elegant, overlaid with a patina of Old Hollywood, including a Maitland Smith chair Fluharty custom-upholstered in a zebra print.
The room is a drama that unfolds naturally, despite a wildly eclectic mix of key players. “Somehow,” says the designer, “it just works.”
Susan Nilsson’s Dining Room
Susan Nilsson Interior Design, Asheville
Harvest-yellow walls and an arched entryway lend the luster of a warm horizon to the dining room in Susan Nilsson’s luxuriously executed 1940s stone farmhouse.
promoting endless summer, fat bouquets of sunflowers — culled from local tailgate markets and U-pick farms — burst ebulliently from a pair of Mottahedeh Blue Canton jug vases. In fact, Nilsson’s Canton collection defines the room. Paired with Baccarat Harcourt crystal goblets, plates are set on the majestic, five-foot-wide dining-room table that boasts, says the designer, “the best cabriole legs I have ever seen.” (Bought at Brunk Auctions, the table was originally made in Mexico for a General Electric executive.)
The rest of the china set makes its home in an oak Welsh dresser; the top of the hutch is arrayed with antique vessels, a wicker picnic box, and other useful curios. “The wooden platters are great serving pieces,” notes Nilsson. “Jugs, wood, and wicker all neutralize the blue and bright yellow.”
However, the main grounding element is the seagrass rug — “like a basket on the floor,” says Nilsson, referring to those valuable Southern-coastal collectibles. In this case, though, Maher Brothers Flooring in Candler uses the material by the bolt to assemble solid but visually light rugs that have proven popular with Nilsson’s clients.
Ultimately, jazz weaves it all together. “My friend Heinz Kossler, the [Asheville tile] artist, made me a wonderful copy of an iPod playlist that turns my dining room into a speakeasy,” says Nilsson. And on that note, “remember that lighting and acoustics are most important when planning a dining room,” she concludes.