HOUSE TOUR _ This North Carolina Home is a Colorful, Art-Filled Dream _ 4K

Hi, Homeworthy! I'm Tara Clayton. Welcome to our home in Durham, North Carolina. I can't wait to show you around. You're watching Homeworthy, where we believe every home has a story. I'm Allison Kenworthy, the founder of Homeworthy, and we take you inside the world's most beautifully decorated homes and introduce you to the brilliant people who live there. Hi, Homeworthy! I'm Liz Lang. Welcome to Gray Gardens. Click the Join button below to access all of our latest episodes ad-free and watch extended cuts of this and other homes, opening the doors to new rooms and exclusive content featuring our beloved hosts. I can't wait to see them. I'm so excited. And if you're looking to shop items inspired by this and other Homeworthy tastemakers, be sure to use the product links below or scan the QR code on screen. To find fabulous furniture, coffee table books, and accessories that can transform your house into a home. My name is Tara Clayton. I'm an interior designer and art consultant. Welcome to my home. We moved to this house in 2021 after searching for a long time to be in this neighborhood. It happened by happenstance, really, which is a special story. We were at a soccer practice and some of our friends were joking around, hey, when are you going to move to this neighborhood? Isn't it time? And we said, we've been looking, but we love the house that we're in now. It would take something really special to make us move. And I just unfortunately don't think we're going to find it. And they said, well, this couple, they just got a job change. They just built this house. They've only lived there for a year. And I think it might be the right fit for you. I really think you should go see it. So we checked it out and I instantly fell in love. It was everything that I had ever wanted in a house. The husband grew up in Miami, Florida, and my husband and I are high school sweethearts and originally from Florida as well. And so the indoor outdoor living aspect of the house was a huge appeal. And the overall charming cedar style and the New England aesthetic was a big draw as well. Our home style is traditional modernism with an eclectic twist. And that twist is inspired by a number of sources such as artists, interesting textiles. Everything in here is meant to feel inviting and welcoming. And the number one goal for our home is that when you walk in the door, you feel like you can sit down and relax. So this is a space for refuge and also inspiration. Welcome to our entryway. The goal for the entryway was really to introduce the house as kind of a home gallery. So the way I achieved that was by creating a giant gallery wall of a few of my favorite pieces. The one in the center is by a Durham based artist named Rachel Campbell, who is an excellent painter. And the title of the piece is called Mostly Name. It happens to be one of our favorite places to visit as a family. And so this was sort of a jumping off point to introduce our house. There are a few books down on the table by Fairfield Porter and Alex Katz, who both happen to spend a little bit of time in Maine as well. You'll see a couple of Alex Katz pieces later in the tour. The biggest challenge in this room was that I wanted to create a space that was balanced, but not symmetrical like you see a lot. So sometimes I choose more traditional works, but my approach to them in hanging them or framing them can be a little bit more modern. So those are sort of some of the intentional, playful twists that I like to make when arranging or framing art to sort of make it feel interesting and fun. The two works on the left are both vintage pieces. And then on the right is a piece by Paul Walensky with sort of these exploding butterflies. A big theme of the house is sort of drawing the outdoors inside. And so I love this to introduce our space. We also found this piece at a gallery called KW Contemporary for Kirsten Wilcox on vacation in Maine. So there's like another draw to Maine. I accented it with a few other pieces. Down here we have a low country landscape by one of my favorite artists, Alexandra Reed. This man, some people jokingly refer to as Simon Cowell, he has no relation to us, but we found him at a street art festival. It's just a sketch by an artist and it was a score for like $25. So we mix high and low and love it. And it creates these fun stories. And the temporal piece of old and new is something that's very important to us as well. This piece is a recent acquisition. We just love it. And it's from Ukraine. So all of these pieces are sort of compiled here together. Food for further thought and to show sort of the eclectic mix that you'll find elsewhere. One thing people sometimes overlook is the power of ceramic pieces. Ceramicists are artists too. And these are absolutely amazing. This is a tulipiere. And it's so cool because you can see it from different dimensions. So I love it here in the entry. The feet are amazing. But also smaller pieces just like an interesting cup or a leaf can be mixed in to add dimension. Now let's step into our dining room. Welcome to our dining room. It's located right across from the entry. So one thing that was very important to me was to continue the theme of bringing the outdoors in. You can see that with the climbing vine wallpaper. And also it's reflected in the chandelier. We have our cute little set of topiaries. And behind this is a work by artist Helen Frankenthaler. It's a woodcut print from the 70s called Cameo. And building our own collection at home, one thing my husband and I try to do is for special anniversaries or birthdays, we'll buy a piece of art. The dining table is new. It's by a company named OKA. And it sits across from this Lily and August sideboard and chest that my husband's mother gave to us when we purchased our first home. We wanted to keep things feeling a little bit contemporary and fresh against the wallpaper. Which is why we chose the Helen Frankenthaler piece to hang here. As well as this wonderful large scale photograph. One of my favorite spots in the dining room is actually this hidden corner over here. I'm very into making nooks feel a little bit special. I think they're forgotten spaces. We have these two mirrors across from a work of art by an artist whose last name is Cosgrove that we found on vacation in Montreal together. And it overlooks sort of this fun bar setup. The curtains are custom. And they're highlighted in this fantastic chevron trim by Schumacher. And on the table here we have a collection of bud vases and this amazing centerpiece by Bowerbird Flower. Who's local to Durham and they're very artistic. The tortoiseshell bud vases and these amazing candle holders are by my friend Margaret Dillard who runs a company called Half Past Seven. So you'll see some of her pieces throughout the home. Now we're going to head to our family room. Welcome to the heart of our family room. This is where our family spends the most time. We have our large TV here. And one of the things that was really important to me was to try to integrate some old pieces with some new pieces. When we moved to this house it was during the height of the pandemic. And so furniture lead times were really, really long. And we had three very little kids at that point who were just churning and burning through lots of furniture pieces with wear and tear. So rather than replace the sofa we kept the sectional and figured out a way to counterbalance it with other pieces and make it our own. Which is exactly what I recommend to my clients. So in order to do so and draw attention away from the TV we created this gallery wall and a few different sitting areas. We needed something that was a little bit sturdier for when we were entertaining friends. And so we moved these chairs and this amazing fabric over here which keep everything cozy but light and bright at the same time. This gallery wall is one of my favorite sections of the whole house. It has a work by Alex Katz in the center named Susan which also happens to be the name of my husband's mom. And it's surrounded by a collection of mostly vintage artworks by relatively unknown artists that go all the way back to I think 1800. There is a historical element and a piece of time that is reflected in these frames. And it creates a beautiful contrast against a more modern piece. Something that's really important when creating your own gallery wall is to figure out a story that you want to tell. And that's the bridge between vintage pieces and new pieces. Is how you live with them and how you want to use them as talking pieces in your home. So this Alex Katz is amazing and would stand alone wonderfully. However, setting her in this scene of boats and having her overlook this view is special and speaks to our love for the water. Just like I like to mix vintage and new furniture pieces, I like to do the same thing with art. And my love for vintage pieces is because they make a space feel so warm and inviting. This special stool was given to me by my dad. We recently had this cushion reupholstered and set it over this vintage desk that also double duties as a console. Across the way, we have this game table, lacquered and a really fun color green from a company called Rail and Style that's in Raleigh. We were also able to snag these vintage chairs from the same company. And I have them upholstered in this amazing quadrille, China seeds, Bali Hai fabric. I've been playing Mahjong for a couple of years, but I still consider myself a newbie. That's about how skilled I am. But I love the color of these tiles against the green. Blue and green is sort of the grounding force throughout the house. But I've sort of explored that color in different ways from old to new. Diagonally across the way, we have this fun scalloped settee from Oomph. This is a new piece, and we're just loving it here. Touches like this round reed chandelier helped highlight, I think, our Florida roots, which is why we're so drawn to the blue and the green and bringing the nature indoors. And so you just see it explored in a variety of ways in this room. These amazing table lamps are from Avala. And I included these yellow finials at the top that I found at High Point Market. These stand over this piece by a company called The Collective, based out of Dallas. And I just love the octagonal shape and the sculptural detailing around the edging. Over here, I love that a touch of black really helps ground the space. And this is a vintage piece from a local shop in Durham called Patina Home. Welcome to our green kitchen. The theme of the kitchen is just to have fun. And that's why I think it's so important that it welcomes you into our breakfast nook. The number one goal of the breakfast nook was to feel happy. So I love this cheerful Molly Mann for Schumacher wallpaper, which achieves exactly that. And I worked closely with artist Eleanor Scott Davis, based in Raleigh, to commission this large modern abstract landscape painting with the wallpaper in mind. The colors and the palette that Eleanor used for the painting were inspired from everything else that you would see not only from inside of the house, in terms of an art perspective, but also the gray shake exterior. So she was able to geniusly account for the mix of cold and warm tones, as well as old and new art in this piece. One awesome thing about working with artists like Eleanor Scott Davis is that you'll always look up at the piece every day and find a new section that you love. The way she has painted the stripes and the different tone-on-tone colors, and also matte versus gloss, you can just really see all of the wonderful details that an artist as talented as Eleanor Scott includes in their work. Something important to me in the breakfast nook was that it felt whimsical and happy, as I mentioned, but also that it felt sophisticated. One way we balanced that out was with some more modern lines in these chairs that are from Ballard Design, and that sits around this pedestal table from Serena and Lily. We had a custom glass top created for it to help protect and preserve it, and we pulled in some of the colors from the other rooms by adding new custom draperies. It's a cravet fabric with Schumacher bamboo trellis tape. This chandelier was amazing. It used to be over the dining room table. This is another example of kind of using what you have and accenting it to make it your own. So we think it's lovely hanging over here in the kitchen. Breakfast nook, which needed a little bit more modern lines against this fun wallpaper. We love to use every space to the most of its abilities, so this space is also our homework room, and this is my daughter's desk. It's actually a stand-up desk. You can kind of twist it up on the side, which is fun, so it can grow with her, and I just added this sweet little chair, which we love. We spend a lot of time and eat most of our meals here at the Kitchen Island. These amazing stools by Memoir Design are new, and they come with a performance fabric cushion, which is really awesome, so our family's been loving those. But one of my favorite spots, since I'm cooking so much, is this little nook over here. This includes one of our favorite pieces in the whole house by an artist with the last name of Fortin, who's Canadian. We also found this piece on vacation in Montreal, and it overlooks the sweet scene of a young boy paddleboarding by an artist in Lake Burton, Georgia, which is somewhere we vacation as a family quite often. This cheerful nook always lifts us up when we're in the throes of dinner duty. The amazing green cabinets in our kitchen were already here when we moved in. When I was outside one day, I stared at a leaf, and I realized that there were so many different shades of green that are contained in one leaf, and so something that we have really developed throughout the house is how to explore all of those different shades in different instances. So you'll find that not only in our kitchen and our breakfast nook and family room, but also throughout the kids' rooms and our room upstairs. Now we are standing on the back porch, which is right off of our family room. The family room is separated by bi-fold doors that tuck all the way back to create a real indoor-outdoor living feel, which is really important to us being from Florida. We love it out here. We've separated it into a couple of different spaces, similarly to what we did in the family room, to get the most use and bang for our buck out here. We have a dining area here, which we love to host and have people come over and enjoy that. Then further down is where we sit around the fire. One special thing we like to do is we like to have these two chairs spaced towards the fire to really help soak it all in and relax, but this is one of our favorite areas of the house. So I was one of those special stories in college that they warn you about. They say, be careful, keep an open mind. You never know what you'll ultimately end up doing. So I went into school knowing that I wanted to be a psychologist, and while I was waiting for an abnormal psychology class to open up, I went to an art history class with my best friend, and after one class, it was survey of Western art, after one class the professor was so inspiring and there was such a psychological aspect to art, I immediately became drawn to it, and I thought I might switch my major after one single course. So I didn't do that. I'm not impulsive. I stayed the course literally and enjoyed the semester, but then quickly decided this was actually what I was supposed to do, and it made so much sense. My mom was an artist. We used to go to museums. Back then when I was a child, I didn't think, if it wasn't realistic, I didn't think that it was done well. Luckily, I have advanced far beyond that now, but I guess you could say it was always part of me. We were always crafting, making our own paper growing up, so creativity was a really important aspect of my family's. After becoming an art history major in college, I interned at the Museum of Modern Art my junior year. Modern art was sort of my specialty and area of interest. After graduating from Davidson, I moved to New York and worked for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the communications department, and that job was to give me exposure to a variety of different art history fields while I decided sort of which area I wanted to focus on. We had a couple of life changes and moves. I moved to Houston for my husband's job in energy, and I worked at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston on some exciting exhibitions, and we later pivoted back to grad school. I went to New York University where I attended an interdisciplinary program where I got to design my own curriculum, and the focus of that curriculum was also on modernism and an artist named Man Ray and photography and theory. So from there, I think my world and eyes sort of opened to the possibility sort of learning about more of the theory of art history and modernism and also how the art historical canon had really centered on this western viewpoint and how it was our job to sort of crack that open and include masterpieces from a lot of different cultures but just a lot of different people and ideas and people who didn't have the opportunity to share their voice. So as that was all building up, so was my interest in design and moving 13 times around the country for lots of jobs. I was always redecorating our apartments. I started doing it for our friends, and gradually this design piece became on par with my art history background as well. I saw this little pathway and opportunity to be a person who could bridge the gap between the two worlds. I felt like a lot of people were either working in design or were working in museums in the art world, and they were sort of connecting but not really, and I saw and believed that I could be kind of a liaison between the two. What I found in working with friends and clients, I would go into their homes and I would see that their sofa might be fine, but what was hanging over their couch could be updated to really accent the space a lot better. Sometimes the reverse was true, or it only needed a small tweak, like an interesting pillow fabric. So instead of going in and completely redesigning spaces, the purpose of my job, I feel, is to help put the finishing touches on. We are at the landing, heading upstairs to where all of the bedrooms are. We designed this as just like a little reading nook area, so it's just someplace special that you can take a little seat and dig into something and get cozy. We have styled the shelves with some family photos and also art pieces from all around. Over here is a piece by one of my favorite artists, Artie Vanderpool, who I worked with a lot at the beginning of when I started my company. You'll see some of his work elsewhere in the house, but this abstract I thought was really special. This art down here is by our old neighbor friend and artist named Carrie Birch. I think her shapes and interesting use of color are really great. We're at the top of the stairs now, which includes three of our favorite works by a Winter Park artist named Robert Ross. Winter Park is where my family grew up, and they have one of the largest sidewalk art festivals in the country. So these were an acquisition from that festival that I've enjoyed going to with my family since I was really young. Across from these pieces sits our first artwork by Eleanor Scott Davis, the same artist who did the work in the kitchen downstairs. And what I love about this work is also the aerial perspective, but the vertical format of it, a little bit more mark making in charcoal or pencil, and this work is done on paper rather than canvas, so you can really appreciate the deckled edge and the way it's been mounted and displayed. Now we are in the primary bedroom, which we just created over the summer. I worked really closely with a seamstress named Lindsay Cronmiller here to create this fabulous little cocoon. The challenge of creating this cocoon space is that I didn't want it to feel too stuffy, but I wanted to retain all of the coziness. So Lindsay and I worked together to apply almost a half tester to a poster bed, and I think it turned out great. The fabric on the outside is by Sewn, and it's been one of my favorite fabrics that I've been dying to use, so I'm really excited that it's something we can enjoy every day. And on the back side here, we have a light blue and white ticking stripe, and as you've seen, a stripe is a big theme throughout our home, and it just keeps things feeling polished and fresh while also remaining timeless, which is important to us. The stripe motif is echoed also on the sheets, which are a Schumacher design for Matouk, and they are topped by the duvet cover and pillow shams on top, also by Matouk, and I just love the embroidered detailing. We have had these side tables for several years, and they have lived in a variety of spaces. They are by Modern History Home, which is one of my favorite companies. On top of them sit these cool zigzag visual comfort light fixtures, which I originally saw on vacation in Kiowa and fell in love with them, so I was ecstatic to find that they were in this really gorgeous color green that goes so well with the sewn fabric. I wanted to keep the accenting of this space really serene and calm, but also interesting and exciting to wake up to. These watercolors are by an artist named Anna Ludka, who growing up in Germany learned how to watercolor from her grandfather, so I think that piece is really special, so they flank both sides of the bed, as well as these two works on the outer edges by Artie Vanderpool, who also did that tiny abstract piece downstairs. These lovely landscape paintings, I think, are just very serene. They are included in these amazing antique frames. To inspire us to keep it light and bright in here, we also worked with our seamstress to put the shades that coordinate with our bed on a remote, so we can wake up in the morning and just pop them up or down as needed. It's been such a lovely thing for this space. It makes us feel like we're in a hotel and on vacation. One reason I love the scrolling fern fabric by Sewn Britain that you see is because you can really be playful with the verticality of it, so we chose the long sections to run vertical, but then railroaded the fabric on top, which I think just does fun things for your eye. This section is what we see when we wake up every morning, and I wanted to really explore the use of texture and pattern, and I think we can really do that in a lovely way with these two dressers by Anthropologie. They're bone inlay and just have the most amazing variations in tone. Above them are two vintage works that I sourced from the U.K., another one of my favorite mirrors, which makes every space special, I think, and then a tiny Museum Bees piece that's mounted on acrylic that my brother-in-law gave me. The top piece is also by Artie Vanderpool and was a purchase we made for one of our anniversaries. It used to hang above the mantle in our old house, but looks amazing in this setting, pulling in all of the great colors from the rug and also what we've done on the bedding and with the window treatments. Right now we're standing in my oldest son's room. His name is Balladin, and he loves the outdoors and exploring. It's something both of our boys and our daughter all enjoy together, but that's kind of the connecting theme through the boys' rooms, which also share a Jack and Jill bathroom. So one way to mix up that theme was what we did over the bed. And over the center here above the chest is a work by one of our neighbors in New York who is from Houston, and her name's Melinda Bowie, and she does these two-dimensional paintings of cows. So now it lives here in Balladin's room because of his love for the outdoors as well. While sometimes I would have loved to make every design choice in my kids' bedroom, it's not what happened, and that's okay too. I think it's really important that their bedroom speaks to them and what they care about, and that's true for adults as well. So my son happened to fall in love with this very challenging bright blue fabric, which is a little bit heavier than what I typically would have designed, but it was such a great challenge and has made this space actually become one of my favorite in the house because it's not necessarily something I would have done myself right off the bat. So it has allowed a really interesting combination of textures and colors and it's been an amazing spot for my budding artist. Over here is his desk, and he's been really into making comics lately and wants to be an author when he grows up. So we'll often find him here working on one of his books. The work over Balladin's desk is by Melinda Stickney Gibson, who's an upstate New York artist, and it's a work that my husband and I purchased when we found out I was pregnant with Balladin. The title of the work is Me and You, and it used to hang over his crib when we lived in Philadelphia. Parks' room is a little bit more colorful. Now we're on the other side of Balladin's room that shares the Jack and Jill bathroom. There are some fun stories in here and a good mix of contemporary and vintage pieces. This work over the chest, there's a great story about how my husband accidentally clicked on the wrong thing and bought it at auction, but it happened to be by an artist with the first name of Clayton, which is our last name. So that's been a kind of funny thing to include, and that we've actually loved and worked around in Parks' room. So we pulled out a little bit of red in his lamp and highlighted his love for the outdoors and fishing. The bed is one of my favorite pieces in the whole house. This is also a vintage find re-lacquered by Raylan Style in Raleigh, and I just love the detailing. There's a little bit of a British vibe that you'll find throughout the house, and I feel like this bed is one of the best examples of that. The artwork over the bed is a print by Joel Shapiro. In college, I interned at the Van Avery Smith Galleries, and we had a vault downstairs of the college's collection of artwork, and we happened to do an exhibition on this artist, and I worked on the exhibition catalog at the time. So later in life, I was able to pick up one of these prints, and so it's really special that it now lives in Parks' room, who is also a budding artist. My advice is to never play it safe. Whenever I've played it safe, I've always regretted what I've purchased. So if that means that you need to save for a while to get the special piece that you want to invest in and cherish for a lifetime, that's my recommendation. Don't take a shortcut. My 4-year-old daughter Annabelle's room right now. It's bright and cheerful and happy, which is exactly how she is as well. Over her bed are a pair of prints by a British artist named Julian Trevelyan. We bought these at auction at Leland Little Auction House in Hillsborough, North Carolina, and the prints department happens to be run by one of my friends from Davidson named Lauren Sanford. So it's a special piece. These two prints were also owned by Davidson College at one point, so it's nice that we love them so much and that it's also a piece from Davidson for me. The previous owners had set this room up as their office, but it worked quite well to create this amazing reading nook over here. This piece is by Society Social. I used a Schumacher trim on the bottom, and I love that the contrast piping also connects to her reading chair over here, which is also by Society Social. There is definitely a big mix of contemporary and vintage feel in here, and the exploration of color in the artwork is pretty bold, I would say. The biggest draw of Annabelle's room is definitely this Schumacher wallpaper and a print called Marigold. I wanted something that felt a little bit connected to the breakfast room downstairs, and I think it achieved just that. I was standing in my daughter's bathroom, and she really wanted it to be pink, so we found a way to make it work. I put this cafe curtain by Pepper Holm to give her a little bit of privacy and to help tie in some of the blue colors that you find throughout the rest of the house. The birds are vintage prints from an old book, and I mounted them on top of some handmade marbled paper that I found on Etsy, and we painted the mats the same color as the walls in her bathroom and had them framed together. I love how they curve the window and make this L shape. It almost feels to me like birds walking down or exploring, and they are great looking, but they also make us laugh and add a lot of personality to a really small space. Home is a place that you can kick back with your family and friends equally as much as it can be a spot where you can entertain, and it should always be inspiring, fun, and welcoming. Thanks for watching. Be sure to go to homeworthy.com for exclusive content, shopping guides, and so much more.