A Decorator's French-Inspired Living Room in Glen Cove, New York | Living Room Tour & Inspiration

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When interior designer Dean Yoder and his husband Jonathan Grimm first walked into this 1910 Dutch colonial on the north shore of Long Island, the living room was, in Dean's words, a white box. There wasn't a stitch of molding anywhere, just bright red shag carpet, a door on one wall and none on the other, no symmetry and no balance. He calls it the hardest room he has ever decorated in his life — and today it's his favorite in the house.

Dean had always dreamed of a French drawing room, and this is his interpretation of one. Every bit of the boiserie you see was built by him personally, pieced together from molding catalogs, finished with a faux gold-leaf treatment and painted over the top. Visitors constantly ask how long the painting took; the technique, he says, is far easier than it looks. With 9.5-foot ceilings rather than the soaring height he'd have preferred, he leaned into intimacy instead, and everything in the room is deliberately oversized so nothing gets visually swallowed.

The collection is the heart of it. Dean bought his first antique at 16 from a dealer in California, and he and Jonathan have been collecting jointly for about 30 years. A Louis XVI signed desk turned up in a Bay City, Michigan thrift shop — Jonathan removed the trunk lid from their rental car to get it home. An Etruscan burial figure dates to the fourth century BC, and a rare surviving head from a similar piece is one of Dean's most treasured objects. A Gothic-style table that Newel Galleries priced in six figures was instead hand-carved and gilded from scratch by Jonathan, who had never carved anything before in his life.

A peacock solved a decorating problem and now separates the seating zones; Dean thinks of him as the room's greeter. Comfortable seating for six, plus pull-up chairs that bring it to eight, reflects his rule for entertaining. His design philosophy is simple: he wants guests to feel their very best, the way you feel walking into a grand hotel — a little better about yourself for having been there.