Designer Rydhima Brar sees spaces as storytelling opportunities, and as she’s not one to shy from layers of color and pattern, her tales tend to run bold. So when her longtime clients relocated to Denver’s Cherry Creek neighborhood and asked for her help with furnishings and light renovations in their new home, the Luxe Next In Design 99 honoree was keen to help them start this next chapter with panache. Because they had worked together before, the couple were quickly on board with her vision for how to make the house’s traditional interiors lean more transitional and bring in a series of “wow” moments. “The idea was to create an elevated look with a luxe feel without going too modern, because the house itself isn’t a contemporary design,” explains Brar.
The couple had already begun making changes on their own, revamping the home’s honey-toned floors with a darker stain and touching up the walls with fresh paint. But they hit a stumbling block when it came to properly furnishing their new abode, and certain elements of their house simply weren’t working for them, period. For example, a sizable stainless-steel hood in the open-plan kitchen posed not just a visual obstruction, but also a physical one. “Both my clients are tall, and the wife told me, ‘I don’t know how many times I’ve knocked my head on the corner of this. We need to find a solution,’ ” Brar remembers.
Beyond (literal) pain points like the positioning of that steel hood, the couple envisioned a place that would be conducive to entertaining a crowd as well as comfortably working from home. “They hope to be in this house for a long time, so even as we talked about details like tile options, they didn’t hold back,” Brar recalls. Having renovated several spaces in their former San Francisco home, the designer had a firm grasp of their aesthetic as well as the materials and color palette they favored—namely, natural finishes, blues and earthy muted tones. She nudged them out of their comfort zone by peppering in warm hues of burgundy, copper and olive, along with geometric patterns. Rounding up the mix is distinctive lighting and her favorite finishing touch: subtle yet statement-making draperies. “In any project, I push for draperies,” notes Brar, nodding to the sophisticated vibe they lend to the dining room. “I always tell my clients that it’s not just about softening or warming up a space, it’s about really adding, from a layering perspective, a kind of gravitas.”
The hard finishes feature moments like the kitchen’s cabinetry, refreshed with a gray-blue hue that plays off white quartz countertops and winks to the dusty blues of the living room’s multicolored rug. There, fluted marble tiles recast what was a ho-hum fireplace façade as a showstopper. “The tile has tons of texture and color—it’s an elegant chocolate brown with green veining and some burgundy there as well,” Brar observes. She also points out the addition of the living room’s striking patterned credenza, as well as the custom stone sink and metallic blue wallpaper of the powder room, as examples where she ushered in additional pattern and texture. “My goal is to make each space its own experience, and that means having at least one statement in each room,” she says. Other quieter choices—the living room’s simple round wooden coffee table, for instance—serve as balancing and grounding elements.
While the home’s lower level is dedicated to spaces that emphasize socializing, the upstairs offers a quiet retreat. Brar conjured a Parisian-inspired ambience in the couple’s bedroom, where a contemporary brass four-poster is topped with vibrant teal bedding. And their bathroom now feels like a spa with olive-green cabinetry, gold Art Deco-inspired accents and a natural stone-lined shower set off by black tile floors. “Though nothing changed structurally, swapping the colors and materials led to a big transformation,” says Brar. “My client claims she used to hate getting ready there—and now she never wants to leave.”
Speaking of things her clients had initially disliked, the kitchen’s hulking hood disappeared entirely under Brar’s watch, swapped out with a streamlined ceiling-mount model. “That made such a big difference from both a design and functionality perspective,” the designer says with satisfaction. Suffice it to say, in every space, this is a design story with a happy ending.
