From Massachusetts to California to Florida, three summer escapes feel at home with their surroundings.
Nantucket, MA
“We wanted to create something authentic that felt lived in and loved,” designer David Ries explains of the plan for his clients’ shingled 1930s guest cottage on Nantucket. He began by painting the walls, ceilings and baseboards white and restoring the hardwood floors, allowing their rich reddish-brown finish to remain intact. The latter “creates a great anchor for the home, and when it gets chillier and foggier, it’s a warm base,” he notes. For the furnishings, Ries chose a mix of vintage and new pieces, many in shades of blue and green. “It feels like it was curated over time and melds beautifully with the existing architecture,” he says, pointing to finds ranging from the living room’s antique Spanish chest and midcentury Jan Vanek armchairs to a Saarinen table in the dining area. For the bedrooms, he opted for consistency and adaptability. “Some of the bedrooms have the same spindle beds with striped linen bed coverings, while others have beautiful rattan chairs, giving you the flexibility to move things around.” Ries chose to weave in quintessential local touches as well: A Nantucket basket and piece of driftwood serve as sculptures atop a coffee table with a Karl Springer base, while the sea and landscape prints are by a local artist who also happens to be the cottage’s caretaker. “It was almost as if the house told us what it wanted,” Ries says. “We knew the setting and the bones, which helped us to understand exactly what we needed to do.”
Montecito, CA
Over the years, architect Ryan Street’s Texas-based clients spent many a sun-kissed summer at Montecito’s San Ysidro Ranch, where board-and-batten bungalows nestle into lushly planted grounds. Eager to capture the iconic hotel’s spirit for themselves, the couple—the husband is a landscape architect and frequent collaborator of Street’s, and the wife is an interior designer—found the perfect property nearby featuring a pool, tennis court and a 1940s cottage with a board-and-batten exterior of its own. Although the site could support a much larger dwelling, the homeowners opted to renovate instead. “They wanted to come here to live as simply as possible. Everything is small-scale; the color palette is minimal, and serenity is the theme,” Street says of their vision. “Nothing but the essentials was the rule.” He retained the interior flooring but significantly revamped everything else, repositioning the kitchen and reconfiguring the bedrooms. There are new architectural details, including a built-in bookcase in the living area, a space the wife appointed with shapely furniture in warm creams, taupes and caramels. Other fresh elements are intended to encourage interaction with the property: a latticework screen on a bedroom window draws the eye outside, as do additional doors and windows. “The bungalow turns into a place where you just sleep and cook,” Street explains, noting the home doesn’t have a dining room—meals are enjoyed alfresco on a terrace, in keeping with the San Ysidro lifestyle. “The space functions as a support system for enjoying the garden and being in Montecito.”
Anna Maria Island, FL
For designer Anissa Zajac’s clients, comfort was paramount for their Anna Maria Island, Florida, vacation home. “They didn’t wish for anything flashy,” Zajac, the owner of House Seven Design, recalls. “Instead, they wanted their kids to be able to come in from the beach and lie on the sofa and watch movies.” Additionally, the homeowners requested that she forgo the usual Florida beach house flourishes, meaning no palm tree motifs, mother-of-pearl or seashells. That’s not to say the designer didn’t draw from the locale, though. The home’s cream, taupe, blue and green color palette chromatically echoes the grass, sand, sea and sky just outside. Coastal-worthy details are also present, like the crisp white tongue-and-groove paneling that Zajac selected for much of the interior. Overall, “There are just a handful of materials used in different ways to create a cohesive vibe,” she notes, pointing to both the linen that primarily covers the seating and a series of rope fixtures that cast light throughout the house. Raffia wallcoverings, wood finishes and lamps made of stone also make appearances. “We stuck with things that felt organic and used a lot of natural elements,” the designer explains. Outside, the house similarly engages with its beachfront setting thanks to sandy tones, louvered shutters and balconies framed with slim railings. Even the home’s pool was color-matched to the ocean’s crystal-blue hue, another decision among many that has yielded a relaxed, inviting family abode.
