Bunny Williams Masterclass in Pattern Scale Blue A Storied Hamptons Estate Living Room Library

Now we're in the formal living room. This room has two seating groups and I'll let Bunny explain that. I think in a large room, I like to break the room up because I find it more comfortable if four, six, eight people can talk together. We wanted this room not too full of furniture, so we did just a pair of sofas with an ottoman in front of the fireplace. This group has a sofa, so two, four, six people are very comfortable sitting there. The room is based on nice, big, comfortable upholstered furniture that gives a weight to the room. Then the other furniture is lighter weight with legs. I think you want to always have a balance of upholstery, openness, so that there's an airiness to the furniture and the way it sits in the room. It's great because it's right off the formal dining room. For larger entertaining, you can always bring in some of those beautiful dining room chairs. One thing that a lot of people have asked us about this room is, why is there no rug? The client did not want one and had a very particular vision about the floors. It's slightly unusual to not have one in your living room, but it's really beautiful. The color of the floor and the pattern of the floor are really the showcase piece when you walk in, which is what she wanted. Also, having no rug gives the room an airier quality. It feels more contemporary in a funny way with no rug. Off of the marble floor, this wood is softer and gives a different feel, so you do feel that coming into the living room sense when you get in here. The client, as I've mentioned before, does not like a lot of plain fabrics. We had to incorporate a lot of designs, textures, and really started with this sofa that has a slight tone-on-tone pattern, and then built off that and layered it. When you can do that successfully, you get a really warm, cozy look. This chintz, everyone was in love with from day one. It's repeated on the other side of the room, so it's nice to have it on both sides to give this continuity. We found this great, almost one-of-a-kind ecotte to go on this pair of chairs. This fabric, which is now discontinued and we wish there were more of, is so wonderful because it's a linen, and it's a pattern, and it's got the two colors. There's a formality to the design, but the linen keeps it kind of country house, weekend in the Hamptons feel, but it works so well with the other pieces in the room. I think when you're mixing patterns, which we love to do, you're mixing the scale. You have a floral chintz, you have a floral pattern. I wouldn't put another floral pattern with it. What we do is, this is more of a damask pattern, which brings out some of the colors, but they're not a perfect match, but it's the different shape of pattern that works together. Then the ecottes are another shape, but if you look, the tonality of them works really well together. There's a real madness to the fact that there are a lot of patterns in the room, but it's a discipline of how you combine them. It's not just any old thing. We really have to make there be a harmony of color and actually different scales to make all the patterns work. There's a certain level of restraint when you really look at it. We also love what we call found fabrics, fabrics that look like maybe you found them on a trip shopping in India. We like to mix those in, and it's successful. We have a closet of found fabrics in the office that we're always going back to, so that it takes what I call the decorator look out of it. It's a little bit more spontaneous. When you're selecting blue for your own home, you have to look at it in the space with that lighting, because things change drastically. We had looked at this blue sample out here before the paneled walls were in. We had looked at it numerous times. Once the paneled walls came in, the windows were in, it changes. You have to look at it in all those different times of day and make sure you really like it because the blue will pick up the other tones and the light from outside and change. I happen to love blue. I use it a lot. People refer to it as bunny's blue. What's interesting, if you say blue, what do you think of as blue? Do you think of the sky? Do you think of a swimming pool? Do you think of navy blue? Blue's got like a million varieties of blue. I think blues that work in a home have a soft quality. There's usually a little bit of green in the blue, and it has a bit of gray. It's not too intense. So when you look at this blue and you look outside, maybe the sky is this color sometimes. It works so well with the green lawn outside. So it's a color that is... Blue is everywhere. I always go back to nature with colors. You've got lots of different blues. If you're in Florida, you can have a much stronger blue because the light is so intense. But in this light, you want a medium blue. I think a dark navy blue room could be depressing. So we're always looking for this blue that has a clarity but isn't too sharp. And usually it'll have a little bit of green in it. If you're going to have a room that's comfortable, you really need to have tables around you that serve a purpose for what's needed. So we have little drinks tables. We have a coffee table that you could put the hors d'oeuvres on. And we have low contemporary tables on either side of the sofa. When you do this, then you need standing lamps because the table's too low to put a lamp on but you get your light. And I like, when I'm sitting on a sofa, I like my light to be at eye level. I don't want it too low. And this room has eye level light and then it has sconces around it. Lighting big rooms like this is one of the most difficult things. And what I loved about this client, which most don't. She did not want high hats. And when we get into this debate and the lighting expert is hired, and I admire them, but they want to put lots of high hats in a room. And this client was adamant no. So we were able to do it with sconces around the room and soft lighting. So it makes the light and a chandelier in the center to help light the ceiling. And it's a warm, really welcoming light at night. So here we are on the other side of the room, the second seating group. And this is where the chintz is used on both of the sofas. We had repeated it on the other side of the room to give that continuity on a chair. We found this great big ottoman, which just gives it a little bit more of a relaxed feel. You know, it's a place you can put your feet up, someone feels okay sitting on. And so when you are entertaining, it gives you more seating, but it also keeps it in a formal room like this, gives you a little bit more informality. It's a great place for the books. And also, if you're entertaining, you can put the tray on it with hors d'oeuvres. The chimney breast in this room is very architectural. It's a panel. This whole room is a proper paneled room. And so the mantle is really a part of the paneling, except for the big, beautiful black bullection molding that frames the opening of the fireplace. This is very typical in a lot of traditional architecture. Sometimes you see a room that has a separate mantle, but sometimes you see a room where it's a paneled room, and the bullection molding becomes a part of it. Over the fireplace, in the panel, we found this beautiful Georgian-English 18th century mirror, but it had been painted white, which you do find a lot of Georgian furniture that has this white paint, which I love about it because it gives it, it's not as grand as gold, and it gives it a beautiful, warm, lighter, fresher quality. We're now in the library, which is a pine room consisting of three spaces. The client was very particular about wanting these three spaces, but to have them all connected. So one of them is her office, which is where we are currently standing, and this is where she comes to do her work, make her phone calls, and meet with people when she's out here. And the center part is for conversation. It's a wonderful place to sit, read. You have a sofa where you've got your back to the light. It's a marvelous reading area. And the third section is a place to watch television. So you frankly can just live in this work. You can watch a movie, you can read, or you can work. And it's a wonderful place. Having these walls that come in, break up this very long space, make it more intimate. So you really have three small rooms in a very big space, and it also gives you a wonderful place for your book collection. The client wanted a library ladder, and so we had one custom made. Funny, it's hard to find someone who will make a custom ladder for insurance reasons, but we found someone who did it. It's very sturdy, and it's really wonderful. It has a shelf. She has an extensive book collection and uses it. And so can get up there, pull the book off, and read and get what she needs from that. But this was a big project to figure this one out. Because most antique library ladders, they're very rickety. I mean, you need two people to hold them if you're going to go up to the top to get a book off the top shelf. So we looked and looked and looked for old ones, but they really weren't safe. So again, this I think is why it's hard to someone who will make you a ladder for insurance purposes, but this one's very sturdy and perfect for the room. And we looked at a lot of images to find the right style and shape and referenced quite a few books. And again, with the sort of yin and yang that we've had through this whole space, this very traditional pine room, we had these modern dory rugs, cotton dory rugs made. Again, sort of a garden pattern, almost like a trellis that is a traditional design, but made to have a contemporary feel to it. So there's a wonderful, always kind of this mixture of these, the brown and off-white prints with the contemporary rug. And I just love this rug too, because it's this cotton dory that has also kind of a South Hampton, you know, we're out at the beach and it kind of brings the formality down a little bit. And one other thing about this space that was so hard to achieve was the finish of this room. And it's something Bunny can speak to through many years of her career, getting wood finishes correct is really difficult. And we went through a lot of samples. And pine often can, the old pine, which was beautiful, had very small knots. Today, if you just say, I want a pine panel room, you get this sort of what we call knotty pine, which nobody wants. So it was finding the right source for the pine and then making a finish, because pine is a very light wood. It's kind of rough. So that took a lot of steps. So you don't want it too yellow, you don't want it too gray, don't want it too dark. It's all those things that go into a custom project like this one is. One thing I'd love to point out, and this is where attention to detail can get you another job with a client, is that so we had to figure out exactly where the leg of this desk was going to go and where the plug was so that we could bring the cords for the phone and all the chargers down the leg, tie the cords so you don't see them, and cut a hole in the carpet and everything lined up perfectly at the outlet. And these are things you have to decide ahead of time because you have to make sure that it all works and it's in the electrical plan. So we decided in this center space to put the furniture, cozy furniture, by the window where you would sit and read and really have a big round table that was easy to walk around because this really is the traffic pattern from the office space to the reading space to the TV space. And we were able to find this beautiful Biedermeier table. It's burled wood, wonderful base, and big claw and animal feet, which we love animal feet. Very strong table that fit beautifully. And the color of this wood with the pine looked really very special. So the client really wanted a place where she could come and enjoy her books and this is just what a great place to be. There's this beautiful garden beyond, a wonderful view. You can see who's maybe coming and going from the front door, who might be coming, popping in for a visit, and you could take a nap here. And the thing is, it's a large room with tall ceilings, but there's something about this seating group at the window that feels intimate and comfortable and cozy and a place you really do want to curl up with a good book. And again, we were able to mix patterns in this room. The chairs are an unusual toile because it has a kind of blue background with the brown. And then the curtain fabric is another brown print fabric that's almost like an Elizabethan pattern that's printed on the linen. And as Elizabeth says, it's so nice to have linen fabrics, cotton fabrics, in a house like this. A formal house, but the cotton and linen fabrics relax it. And the center pillow on the sofa is from one of our office found fabrics from our magic cabinet we have of all of these found fabrics through our travels. I think that everybody talks about styling a bookcase. There are bookcases that are simply styled, and there are bookcases of people who read their books and use them. And this is the case in this house. And what you have to do when you do that is that you have to put the like subjects together. So the garden books go together, the history books go together, the antique books, whatever your collection of books are, should be together so you can find them, which is very important. And then you do want to, this room is not done alphabetically. It's done really more by section. If you were doing it alphabetically, you could have a very tall book and a low book. So I tend to then group the books a little bit by height, the bigger books on the bottom. And what's fun is to leave some spaces to put your collection of some photographs or an object, whatever you might collect. What I don't like is to go into a room full of books and all they put are pictures on them. Because they're for books. They're not for, can be for the occasional picture, but not filled with just family pictures. So I think how you use your library. Some people have books, they're never going to read them. They're never going to look at them. But I want a library to look real. That's why I would never do a color-coordinated library. Some people want all the red books together, all the blue books together. Well that, to me, isn't about a library. And one thing we love, this is just a hot tip, there are these plastic, very clear thin bookends that we have found. And we love them because they go away. You don't see them, but they, you know, when you're using your books and you're moving things in and out, things need to stay upright and not constantly be falling over. And so we use these all the time. And they're really wonderful and not super expensive. And they help showcase your library and keep things organized, but also allow you to put some beautiful things between them that you might be a little worried about the books leaning up against. And so they're really quite useful. So in this room, where you're going to be primarily watching television, we wanted to make sure that the sofa was comfortable, a place you could really fit a bunch of people, which it can. We used a linen fabric with a print on this sofa. The great thing about this fabric was it has this amazing border that we were able to use around the base of the sofa. And you know, you need to think about these things when you're laying out how a piece is going to be upholstered. You know, can you use the borders? How do you trim it? And all of those details, because when you do, you get a really successful piece. And so that's what we did here. There's a beautiful Anglo-Indian table that was found on the travels to England that I love this graphic top on it and the beautiful base. These chairs are really wonderful because they're easy to move. And then there's a really large chair in Ottoman where you can also move that around. It's on casters for more viewing, but you could also plop there and pull one of the books off of the shelf and read in this corner with that lamp. This room is multifunctional. It's very cozy in the evenings and the winter months. I love coffee tables that have a shelf below. This one was very interesting. I'm not sure when it was made because they didn't have period coffee tables, but it looked like it was made out of a piece of antique parquet with the brass columns and the shelf below. So then you can put books and things underneath and use the top if you want to come in with coffee after dinner or hors d'oeuvres. It makes a great, great coffee table. And again, in this room, we mix patterns. There are three different patterns here, but because they all have a different scale, that's how they all work together. You've got a little bit more geometric floral, a stripe, and then the bigger pattern at the window. So the tonality of them work, even though they're very different patterns. There's a harmony for sure. Sometimes I think that designers can get over-obsessed with pairing things up. And in this room, I like the fact that it's not a pair of lamps, and it's not even a pair of tables. I think that sometimes when you've got pairs of lamps, pairs of tables, pairs of everything, it gets boring. So I think it relaxes the room to not always have pairs everywhere. The sconces are the same because they're really more a part of the architecture. And you'll also notice in this space, we've used the same lighting as we have in the entrance hall because there were so many light fixtures, we thought it was calmer to just repeat the same style of ceiling light instead of having each one be different. And you see them from the entrance hall as you walk into this space, which is really great. But back to these lamps, it's so fun to use ceramic lamps. We love them because they also add a little bit of color. Not everything has to be brass and wood, and finding these beautiful ceramic lamps with these glazes is something that really just adds another color and texture. And we love finding those and including them.