How Collected Design Creates a Stylish & Sophisticated Home

It's always a special treat to see how our customers use and sometimes transform pieces they acquire over years of collecting the things they love. Our client's warm and wonderfully decorated Greenwich, CT home truly embodied her passion for collecting vintage, antique, and contemporary pieces and creating a comfortable, fun, stylish and sophisticated home. Our client has a knack for finding furniture with “good bones” and transforming or reimagining them into relevant and on-trend pieces for today’s eclectic lifestyles. She also has a great eye for mixing-it-up to create a fresh, sometimes funky, design aesthetic. It might seem as if her design style is akin to finding compatible pieces from a variety of puzzle boxes and putting them together to create her own masterpiece.

With her blessing, we shot several photos of the rooms before we packed up everything to bring back to our showroom warehouse for the Stylish and Sophisticated Greenwich Home flash sale. Hopefully these images will serve as inspiration for your own stylish and sophisticated design. We've also included descriptions below the inspiration photos to help you see some of the key elements that make the design cohesive.

Warm Family Room

What family wouldn't love to hang out in this warm family room? We love the blending of mid century pieces (i.e., the vintage mid-century end table with cut branch top and the mid-century style chocolate brown upholstered sofa and loveseat) and industrial and traditional elements (i.e., large industrial chic console table behind the sofa and the pair of distressed foo dogs adorning it). We also enjoy our client's playful eye for art (pun intended) considering the large oversized eye print on the wall behind the sofa and the four colorful pieces flanking the fireplace. Although the warm browns and neutral warm whites hold the room together, our client's ability to ensure fun pops-of-color brings this room to life. Not the bright emerald green square bowl on the coffee table or, once again, the fun colorful artwork on the fireplace wall.

Dramatic & Moody Dining Room

Can we just say, "Ohhhhhh!" here? Yes, the dark, moody backdrop in and of itself is dramatic, but add the brilliant pops of polished brass and gold tones with the rich and warm red and brown tones in the table and chairs and you get a simply stunning, sophisticated, and elegant room. Here's what we love most...

The multi-dimensional grasscloth wallpaper not only adds texture to otherwise flat walls, it creates a clever canvas for monochromatic light and dark grays immediately setting the dramatic tone in the space. Then add in the black buffet/server with brass pulls and the glammed-up ebonized bar cabinet in between the two full-length windows grounds the room with a rich foundation for adding the other decorative elements. In the center of the room is an extraordinary mid-century oval sunburst-top dining table with heavily polished steel base. The base not only creates another layer of glam, but also adds another dimension to the metallics in the room. Place around the table is a gorgeous set of four mid-century chairs with awesome lines, beautiful wood, and luscious, shimmering velour upholstery.

Modern meets glam meets function.

But don't let the dramatic backdrop fool you. Our client's playful side shows through with the addition of the Jonathan Adler two-faced vase as the table's centerpiece, a fantastic MCM style floor lamp in the corner of the room (to the right of the server) and the fun wall art over the bar cabinet.

Finally, the light herringbone patterned area rug lends lightness to the room while tying into the monochromatic grays on the wall and shimmery velour on the chairs.

Funky Fun Foyer

The foyer is often the "forgotten" room in many houses. But not for our client. She sets the tone for the rest of her home by blending traditional elements (vintage wallpaper, traditional stairway, and wide-planked flooring) with fun and funky elements including the foyer's focal piece: an iconic Warren Platner lounge chair for Knoll in a chartreuse upholstery with a single cushion adorned with a sheepskin wool throw pillow. Wow!

Other elements adding a touch of whimsy include the vintage figural ink drawing in a custom black museum frame with lovely matte, a convex brass garden stool with a patina that only comes with time and age, and an amazing Stark patchwork pattern leather and hide throw rug with cream, beige, chocolate brown and toast tones. A fun, funky, fresh take on design.