ENTRYWAY
Bright Side
THE HOME: Traditional five bedroom turned open-concept delight
THE WISH LIST: “We wanted it to be full of light and feel peaceful,” says Elizabeth Bear, a home design consultant who also works with brands on Instagram and has been remodeling her Centennial home with her husband.
THE PROCESS: Bear and her husband had plans to remodel since moving day in 2010. The home’s foundation had good bones, but the floor plan wasn’t open, carpet covered the common areas and there was wallpaper “on pretty much every single wall,” she recalls. For the entryway, an overhaul meant ripping up said carpet, removing said wallpaper, swapping a dated chandelier with three pendant lights and rebuilding the staircase with new banisters, thick wood treads “for a more modern look” and more.
There was some hardwood floor on the main level, but it was stained too dark for Bear’s design plan. They had the stain removed and topped the original wood with a water-based polyurethane (which won’t yellow like the oil-based version, Bear says), then filled the rest of the place with new matching planks.
West elm had an ideal storage cabinet. “My husband’s office is right off the entryway and he needed extra storage,” Bear says. “We wanted the piece to match the white cabinets we built for his workspace. We also changed the hardware to keep things cohesive.”
For the rest of the accessories, Bear played with height and odd-numbered bunches: “With art as well as accessories, I definitely don’t follow the rule about keeping everything at eye-level. … Across from the cabinet is the closet and above that is some high wall space. I have a piece of art there too.”
THE IMPACT: “Our home feels fresh and alive,” Bear says.
THE BOTTOM LINE: Consider venturing into D.I.Y. territory. “People can get overwhelmed at the idea of trying things on their own because they don’t know how to do it, but there are ways to learn if you’re really interested,” Bear says.
ELIZABETH BEAR DESIGNS, Centennial
Curated Crowd-Pleaser
THE HOME: Eclectic space for a young family
THE WISH LIST: No trends. And instead, lots of vintage décor. “They didn’t want their house to look like it was done in 2017,” says Tory Bond of Tory Bond Designs, the project’s design mastermind.
THE PROCESS: The Greenwood Village entryway was outdated, as was most of the floor plan. Both were reconfigured in a roughly nine-month remodeling project.
A new wall created a feasible entryway to work with. “You don’t want to just walk in to a big open box, but you also don’t want to walk into a small, tiny room that feels claustrophobic,” says Bond.
The Kipp Stewart walnut and rosewood cabinet, Moroccan Kilim rug and coat rack are antiques: “I’d say I use at least 50 percent vintage furniture in most of my projects,” Bond says. And the gallery wall features oil paintings from friends. “The homeowners’ collection of paintings had pieces that were too small to put on a single wall—they would just get lost if you hung them individually,” Bond says. “That made it easy to design a wall around them.”
THE IMPACT: “You walk in and you know interesting people live here,” Bond says.
THE BOTTOM LINE: “Are you somebody who’s interested in seeing and buying curated things? Do you like going to estate sales?” If yes, then this design approach is for you.
“It’s an art, not a science.” To get something eclectic, think about what details resonate with you. “This kind of art wall could be of mixed media pieces or antique textiles or kids’ artwork.”
Speaking of photo walls, Bond considers complimentary frames a requirement. “Here, you’re not seeing a bunch of different types of frame styles,” she says. “You lose the value of the art if the frames are competing with each other.”
TORY BOND DESIGNS, Cherry Hills Village
720.573.0970
WHAT’S NEW, according to KIM LAYNE
ENTRYWAY
Rather than a new trend, designers are just enjoying the freedom in the amount of specialty items out there: “Things used to be so much more limited, but now you can find anything—and it’s all so accessible to everyone.” The (home décor) sky’s the limit.
HOME TEAM
Bear talks interior design with close-to 30,000 attentive Instagram followers every day at @elizabethbeardesigns. Here, questions she is asked most often and her solutions to the décor snags.
How can I pick a good white or gray paint color? “Whites and grays can be tough because of lighting; one gray can look great in your house, but terrible in someone else’s. You’ve probably heard this before, but I tell people to go to the paint store for a sample, paint a piece of cardboard with that sample and walk around your house to watch how the light changes the color. Sometimes you have to paint part of a wall.”
How do I keep my style consistent from room to room? “It depends on whether they are asking me about one room or about the whole house, but I like to use the same color palette throughout my home. Some people separate colors into rooms, which is fine, that’s just not my look.”
I need a new light fixture. What metal should I pick? “The inquiring homeowners will have brushed nickel in the kitchen, brass on their doorknobs, etc. Either they are fine with mixing metals, which you can certainly do, or they haven’t quite gotten to the whole house with one option yet. I’ll tell them to look to the room in the house whose design is completely done: choose what you used in there and then slowly work that metal through the rest of the house.”
What carpet size do I need? “Sometimes people don’t go big enough. If you can’t visualize dimensions, take blue painter’s tape and literally mark out the carpeting area you think you want to fill.”