Bold pops of color and dynamic prints create an immediate impact upon entry into the Charlotte vacation home that Charlotte Lucas of Charlotte Lucas Interior Design created for a European family.
“The clients do not have these kinds of bright colors in their permanent residence,” Lucas says. “But they were willing to go a little bit out of their comfort zone and do some splashes of color here. They just wanted it to be a happy place.”
The clients – a couple from Norway with two young daughters – had seen Lucas’ work on Instagram and reached out to her through email. “Charlotte’s use of colors and way of combining old and new looked perfect for our project,” the homeowner offers. “We normally spend our summers in Charlotte, and we were looking for a place that could be a home away from home but still give us that ‘vacation’ feeling. Our design requirements were pretty basic: color, light, fun.”
Having never met the clients prior to starting on the house, Lucas’ team emailed them questionnaires and talked with them on the phone. “Charlotte and her team were great at communicating with us and making sure they understood what we wanted and who we were,” the homeowner explains. “From there, they just took control and came up with something that we were blown away
with when we walked in the door for the first time.”
Since the clients were abroad, they needed a turnkey design service, so Lucas and her designers started with a completely blank slate and sourced all products in the house, from the sofa to the silverware and everything in between. Through very detailed hand-drawn renderings, the designers were able to express to the clients their interior design concept and walk them through various design details, including the unfettered use of color.
“The dining room sets the stage for the rest of the house,” Lucas explains of her decision to pair a floral wallcovering with dining chairs covered in bright teal velvet set atop a leopard-print rug. “We really wanted the space to be bold, colorful, and exciting because that’s the first thing you see when you walk in.”
The key to successfully employing so much color and pattern throughout the home is achieving balance. The chairs upholstered in solid velvet complement the patterned walls and floors in the dining room, while in the family room Lucas clad the walls in grasscloth to provide richness and texture and added a vibrant floral sofa, animal-print club chairs, and hand-painted credenzas.
For the master bedroom, Lucas created a serene place for the couple with a blue and white palette. A floral wallcovering offers a subtle backdrop to the vintage furniture, including the bed, mirrors, and Dorothy Draper chests repurposed as nightstands. “We wanted that space to be a little bit more toned down but still feel alive and fresh and fit in with the rest of the house,” Lucas says.
Color reemerges in the two daughters’ rooms, which were designed to suit each girl’s unique personality. For the youngest, who was in first grade at the time, Lucas wanted to create “something fun, whimsical, and not too babyish.” Varying shades of pink are executed in a more refined way by pairing a geometric-print wallcovering with floral window treatments and solid upholstery on the window seat. The homeowner said that her younger daughter would sleep in a hammock if she could, so that pr ompted the design team to install a swinging hammock chair as a f inal whimsical touch.
The older daughter, who was in the tween stage, has a penchant for greys and blues, so the designers devised something a bit more sophisticated and cool for her. Grey-and-white House of Harris floral bedding inspired the palette for the room. “We decided to have the wallpaper custom colored to match the upholstery,” Lucas explains. “It’s a very traditional concept of using one fabric for every application, but it’s an updated fabric. And we use modern lines complemented with modern furniture, so I think we achieved a really fun kind of fresh feel for her.”
Lucas feels confident that she delivered the fun, happy vacation home that the clients were seeking. “When we design for people, I usually say, ‘I want your house to be the best version of yourself.’ And without having physically met these people, I was really hoping that was the case here,” Lucas offers, adding that she was most pleased to visit the family once they’d moved in to see how contentedly they had settled into the home.
“The common areas of the house represent the way we want to live when we’re on vacation,” the homeowner says. “We’re so pleased with the house that we consider it as one big work of art that has many parts, all of which offer something new and fun and which link together to create a vacation home that you always look forward to going back to.”
And the designer herself has a particular fondness for this project. “I just love this house,” she admits. “I love all the pattern. It’s just the happiest house.”