A Maximalist Designer's Home Filled With Color & Pattern!

i'm very very fortunate to have lived in this house for almost 20 years now it's the longest i've lived anywhere and it has seen many phases of reinvention color and new pattern this house was built in 1930 and it has all of the original detailing and i preserved all of that it's really important to me not to open up walls not to have the ability to see from the front door right through to the back i like being able to entertain and i love being able to have walls that hold art i am completely a self-proclaimed maximalist i love the more is more is more it's layers of pattern it's layers of accessories it's layers of color it's impact every single space has to have an impactful moment a vignette a discovering mode where you're in the room and it's overwhelming with all that there is to look at i like to say that there is not a bad seat in the room i really wanted to have a spot where you felt like you were entering i don't have a center hall i don't get to have a big vestibule so i actually created one i was also dying to do red in the house so the way i could get away with it without a huge revolt in my house was to paint the vestibule bright red it certainly sets the tone for what the rest of the house is like and it also had to be tiled floor in order to cope with the winter muck that does come across our threshold the coal and sun wallpaper is my favorite i love blue i love orange and the fact that there's monkeys on it makes everybody stop and pause but i only chose to wallpaper above the wainscoting that we added so again it wore a little bit better with the amount of traffic going up and down the stairs my living room is crazy it has a lot in it for a small space what was important to me was to make the fireplace which is wood burning a focal point but i didn't want to take out the stone around it it would involve too much work and it would be too costly so i kept it and i painted it out black instead we refaced the mantle so that i could make sure that it was larger and more impactful but not too ornate i absolutely love having two couches two different sizes but dress the same in a beautiful brunchwick and fee fabric so that lots of people can lounge i love bench cushions on my sofas so that it's not divided into one or two or three cushions nobody falls between the cracks here the holidays christmas or birthdays we always have more people that can actually sit on the sofas so having extra chairs sitting behind the sofa are perfect because they're easy to pull into the dining room easy to pull in for extra seating in the living room but when we're not entertaining it allows us the space to move around the room which is great i think the loudest part of my room would probably be my crazy ceiling which is hot pink i did ask my husband how he felt about it and he said it was fine and i will fully admit that it was the one room when it was done when he walked in and said oh i think that it took some getting used to but i'm really glad that we went ahead and did it and then we echoed it at a different eye level with our velvet lampshades on either side of the fireplace it adds that little bit of hit of pink against the blue walls and then it also marries in the ceiling color i absolutely love my green chevron drapes in my living room one of the things that i think is important when you're decorating especially in canada is that you don't make a room feel too seasonal you want to make sure that your decoration can go between the seasons my green chevron allows that bright summery fresh feel during the spring months and the summer but it also because of the green allows it to go into the winter and not feel too summery i like to make sure that there's some congruence between our rooms while i am truly a maximalist they do actually have to speak to one another and when thinking about what to do in my dining room we painted the walls and added the architectural detailing to be the same in both rooms again wanting to take a little bit of a risk i wanted to incorporate a bit of yellow in that room i have came back to chairs and i had slip covers made in a large cabana awning stripe just to slip over the back of my chairs it's a very economical way to feel like i have two different sets of chairs and sets the mood at a different time of year one of the things that was really important to me when i was redesigning the kitchen was that we could allow for overflow storage into the dining room i may have a little bit of a habit in china pattern collecting so this was a great way for me to be able to disguise some of that and have some of the pieces especially seasonal pieces from the kitchen move into the dining room storage i really wanted a large statement fixture for my dining room but being that it's quite small and that the ceilings are only eight feet tall i found this great light fixture which i wanted to use but i had to alter it a little bit and i took off all the hanging mechanisms and i actually made it a ceiling mount instead of a hanging pendant in order to use it in my dining room i love it because the widest part of the fixture is actually at the ceiling the most narrow part is closer to the table so nobody hits their head when they stand up from the table and we get a big impactful light fixture not to be forgotten is the ceiling where i use schumacher's celery kimbles feather bloom on the ceiling one of my favorite patterns used it in blue so that the blue relates back to the wall color and then we also use the same drapery in the dining room as we did in the living room to tie it all back and add that extra hit of color i waited 20 years to redo my kitchen it drove my mom bonkers every time she came over but it was so worth it because the kitchen i ended up designing would never have been the one i designed a year ago or two years ago and i'm so grateful for waiting it is completely different than the rest of my house it is a little bit more modern in its design my husband and i both absolutely love to cook so figuring out how we could both be in the kitchen without wanting to kill one another was imperative for me it also was important that i increased my counter space because we do entertain quite a bit i am in love with marble shelving it was something that i note in restaurants across europe in the markets on furniture and i wanted to incorporate that i also didn't want to keep such a small kitchen layered with all cabinetry i find that it closes it in and it doesn't allow the space to breathe i wanted to go with blue because i absolutely love blue and i wouldn't get tired of it and the blue is quite dark it's abyss by benjamin moore and at night reads almost black which i love because i almost feel like we get two different sets of cabinetry marvel as a kitchen counter is always a point for discussion i was very diligent and freaked a lot about anybody touching it but then i think as time wore on i kept remembering how much i fell in love with the marble that's in europe which has aged for hundreds of years and the most spectacular part of it is how soft it is and the patina so i actually went for the worst thing ever in marvel i did homed so it's not even sealed so that they will patina and they will change over time so as no one admits they have a favorite child designers rarely admit they have a favorite room but i do and it's my family room it's where we congregate it's where we fight over hockey games and where we cry over movies i wanted it to be warm feeling because in the winter there's so much glass and so many windows it can feel quite cool so we added a gas fireplace which i absolutely love and heats the room beautifully as well and in the summer it can actually be quite hot because of all of the glass so i wanted it to feel light and airy as well my family room is painted pickle literally it's called pickle by sherwin williams i did ask my family if i could paint it green and of course everyone said oh sure sure and it was done while we were away and we came back and they walked in and it was another oh moment but actually everybody loves the fact that it really has a personality of its own i used an amazing philip jeffries weave on the walls which has green and blue woven into the cloth and i love the texture and the layering that it provides we built in lots of storage to be able to use for maybe some more china and my glassware that i collect as well so again it's out of the high real estate of the kitchen i love the fact that we have a massive couch and i love that it's covered in fabric from design legacy that my girlfriend denise mcgahee designed i also went and added a large large piece of art it's oversized and incorporates the entire wall it's by a girlfriend of mine casey hughes from nashville and i love that she also has a presence in my room i certainly am known for taking every lampshade that we have and every lampshade my clients have and making them custom pravitt has a great line that we love to use and i echoed it in the chandelier as well as the lamps that sit on the tables that flank the sofa because we kept the ceiling white the green lampshades really do sing against the blank canvas of the ceiling there are three bedrooms and one bathroom which is the main bathroom for the house so yes i grew up with my kids sharing a bathroom with me and the bathroom is very meager it's teeny teeny tiny one of the things that i did in the bathroom which has gained quite a bit of attention is my crazy idea of hand painting the walls the night before i was actually having the house shop for house and home i took inspiration from the pure fray fabric that is hanging in the blind in the window and decided to paint a very similar pattern all over the wall and then at about 11 o'clock sent a picture to my mom and said look at what i'm doing and she said oh my gosh this is you 20 years ago how you started in the industry with handmading furniture and it's true sometimes you get taken right back to your roots and where you started i really like square spaces and the proper master is narrow and long so it actually didn't benefit us in any way in terms of getting more furniture in it or more storage and so i chose the bedroom on the back of the house that is more square so our bedroom literally is 10 feet by 11 feet it is teeny tiny and i happen to love it we added architectural molding on the walls and then i painted it black which is nuts and i chickened out the night before and i had to phone a friend and say oh my gosh am i about to make the biggest mistake and he said well what would you tell a client and i said oh my gosh i would tell them not to worry about it it's only paint and he said so there's your answer i absolutely love it i wanted something that felt new york chic and i have a rosewood double dresser in the room against the black and it just i think looks spectacular and of course true to form i bought beautiful barber berry lamps a number of years ago and put hot pink fabric on them to allow for that pop of color against the black and it's all framed of course with a beautiful painting by laura dick who's an artist in the beaches here in toronto and i absolutely love being able to look at it every single morning one of the things that i love is when we either match wallpaper and headboard fabric so that they're layered on top of one another or in my bedroom i used the same fabric on the headboard and then i also used it again in the drapery in such a small room repeating patterns or fabric choices actually tends to work very very well because it opens up the room as opposed to overwhelming it i think decorating with color can be very intimidating for a lot of people especially canadians when you start starting with things that you can change quickly or economically is a great idea so accent pillows on a bed accent pillows on a sofa paint on a wall painting your moldings and your casings the same color as your wall i think those are great things to do i think color is really important they don't teach you in kindergarten to paint with gray black and white they just don't and i think that we lose some of that joie de vivre over the years because we become afraid i would love for people to embrace color in their homes try an odd room here and there because i guarantee you once you start you won't be able to stop you

Channel: House & Home

Views: 286,920

Rating: 4.8421955 out of 5

Keywords: House & Home, House, Home, Decor, Decorating, Decorated, Design, Designer, Decorate, Decorator, Interiors, Interior Design, Interior, House Tour, Home Tour, Homes, Architect, Architecture, Style, Styling, Stylist, Inspo, Inspiration, Tips, Advice, Expert, Ideas, Best, Beautiful, Color, Pattern, Colourful, Colorful, Maximalist, Colorful Decor, Cynthia Ferguson, Wallpaper, Kravet, Canada, Toronto, Toronto Home, maximalist design, diy bathroom walls, diy wallpaper, Lee Jofa, Benjamin Moore, Sherwin Williams, Colour

Id: luIyq_k6HC8

Length: 13min 47sec (827 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 03 2021