Sea of Blue: Seabrook Island Master Bathroom

This week, we’re featuring yet another remodeled master bathroom! This couple is celebrating their ten year anniversary of living in a city by the sea by finally getting around to modernize their master bath. As you can see, neutral colors are very popular for master bathrooms, but this couple had a particular theme in mind: the coast! See how we brought the oceanside inside this Seabrook Island home with coastal colors, textures, patterns, and a fresh, more functional floorplan! 

But first let me share a few before photos.

 And now for what it turned out like!

 For those of you who are extra vain, you’ll love this extra long vanity! In addition to the ample counter and storage space, there are three recessed mirrored medicine cabinets. Now there is no excuse for any bathroom clutter: you know, shave cream cans on the counter, makeup scattered about, or hair styling tools on accidental display. With more than enough room between sinks, Jack and Jill can perfect their morning routines without bumping elbows!
 

 

When mirrors are in abundance, lighting must be too! The bright glow from the wall sconces allow for a soft, clean light to reflect all your beauty (and flaws, if you have any!). A small, double-sided mirror attached to the wall is a perfect add-on to any bathroom. Notice that all the metal matches: it is especially crucial to keep continuity in the metals used in any space.

 

Step on in to your stupendous shower! This oversized shower has room for two, or enough dancing space for one. Though massive, it manages to keep the bathroom spacious with its crystal clear glass and tiles to match the floor. Though opposite the vanity, the same metal is still used in the shower head, faucet, handle, and on top of the shower- never feel that you must compromise continuity! You can always get exactly what you want.

Now, let’s take a look at the color scheme: grays, blues, whites, and sandy gradients bring in the beach. Even the gray backsplash features tiles with a ‘sea glass’ effect. The walls are the color of where sea meets sky: a subtly blue hue. The tile and countertops feature sandy gradients, while the white cabinetry with its custom millwork reflect the style of southern, beachside properties.

If you didn’t think there was enough storage between the recessed mirror medicine cabinets and the extra long vanity, look to the right! No master bathroom is complete without standing linen storage: his and hers. Where else could you store all bathroom and beach necessities?!

If you have a project in mind but just don't know where to start, we can help! Contact us! 

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Coakley Residence- Bloom Where You Are Planted

  For this jet-setting professional, finding a place she could lovingly call ‘home’ wasn’t always an option-- until she one day decided to root herself in Houston. Starting from the ground up, this home needed everything--down to a mattress! While a fresh start is always exciting and the opportunities seem endless, this new homeowner already had a vision of planting the perfect home.

 Feeling as if you can float through this home, the ocean blues and greens found in every room offer a serene continuity that is vastly welcoming and comforting. Each guest bedroom serves as a haven for all of the travelers that pass through. Comfort, charm, and ample storage create the perfect space for guests to feel at home.

  

Along with the blues and greens, gray is used throughout the home to be neutral and calming. To add a touch of depth and intrigue, try using many of the infinite shades of gray rather than trying tirelessly to match gray swatches (boring!). As seen in this living room, texture and myriad hues of the same color make this room deeply interesting yet with a calming effect. The sleek leather chair, velveteen couch, and tufted chair are large neutral pieces that allow for small bursts of color to really spark interest.

 Seating arrangements must be strategic! All chairs, sofas, and love seats need to be positioned comfortably so that all guests can socialize without leaving anyone out. This can be difficult to achieve, especially while keeping people’s seating preferences in mind. Whether in the kitchen, dining room, or living room, there is usually a visual focal point in a room for guests to be actively or passively engaged with (think cooking, watching the game on TV, playing Pictionary, looking at each other across the room, whatever!).

  

Our client longed for her home to be clutter free. As you’ll notice in her minimalist office, furniture in the center of the room is streamlined and skeletal. It fulfills its duty as a desk, chair, computer, etc. while keeping the rest of the room visible. Larger pieces of furniture are placed against the wall to keep the room appearing spacious, while concealing anything that may clutter this workspace.

 

 I never quite understood the phrase ‘the devil is in the details.’ The wooden hexagons pieced carefully together to create this beautiful desk seems rather heavenly to me. I suppose that phrase is highly interpretive, but I’d rather replace ‘devil’ with ‘beauty.’ I’d even go so far to say that this desk and wonderfully colorful rug were a match made in design heaven.

When she isn’t working from home, entertaining guests, or traveling the world, our client retreats to her home’s master bedroom to relax and rejuvenate. Soothing grays, blues, and whites seem like rolling waves that crash soft and white upon a quiet shore. All that is needed for a satisfying rest is a bed and a pair of bed-side lamps.

 Being the traveler she is, she understands the importance of having a comfortable place to touch base, and aimed to offer just that to her guests who spend a night or two (or ten!). And with that, her home bloomed where it was planted: from an empty space in Houston into a haven where all her loved ones can gather.

 

 

Not enough seating? Don’t worry- there’s another entire kitchen and dining area OUTSIDE! This is by far the most impressive feature a host can offer her guests. Outdoor hospitality in Houston is a must- Houstonians are proud to handle the heat, but from a shaded distance. Grilling, making refreshing cocktails, and keeping beer cold are just a few of the amenities offered in this outdoor kitchen.

And still, guests are able to socialize in style and comfort as the colors from inside continue outside, but with new textures. The blue hues in the slate blend the orange from the house’s brick in with the gray of the furniture. Stainless steel appliances add sophistication to this outdoor kitchen.

The Heights Oasis

When two people live under one roof for the first time, compromise is key. Thankfully for this couple of young professionals, there was little compromising to be had. Their home in the Heights was designed with the bigger picture in mind: achieving harmony and balance. From living room, dining room, to bed room, a continuity runs through much like a serene river delivering peace and calm to each space. Deep, rich walnut offers structure to the neutral hues of gray and blue, with accented silver like reflections of sunrays off water.

 

 The living room serves as the center of the home, complete with fireplace and piano to make it a truly warm and inviting space. Because the fireplace is tucked away in a corner, it can’t exactly serve as a focal point in this living room despite matching the color and textures of the flooring and furniture. This presented an interesting design challenge, but strategic placement of furnishings, artwork, and other important pieces is crucial to overcoming this obstacle. For example, L-shaped sectional helps to close off a space where guests can enjoy the warmth from the fire in the comfort of the low, streamlined sofa that opens up the entire room. 

 

Two living room must-haves: pooch-proof furniture and a piano. Imagine snuggling up with your pup, humming along to a sweet melody played by your significant other. This couple wanted just that: furniture that was comfortable, durable, and stylish where they could relax with their dog and guests alike.

This living room lends a relaxed mid-century modern feel with geometric patters accenting the neutral colors and natural woods. The furnishings feature crisp lines that offer straightforward functionality and organization to the room.

Old fashionistas may tell you that black and brown can simply never, ever go together- but that rule is simply outdated! While we can’t escape the black plastic of today’s entertainment technology necessities, we can definitely embrace it. No need to hide these sleekly engineered gadgets: placing an equally sleek, black leather seat does the job to incorporate all these tech items nicely into the rich array of browns featured in the natural wood floor and cabinets. 

Flowing from the living room is the dining area. The deep wood and subtle curves of the chairs complement the straight cuts of the table. Notice the angle of the chair and table legs: about 30 degrees off center, rather than jutting at a harsh 90 degree angle. This seemingly minute detail vastly changes the room and creates a much more open, inviting atmosphere that is typical of the mid-century modern design. 

 

White lacquer: so sleek, so chic! This ‘dry bar’ table is one of the most beautiful, simple, and sophisticated pieces added to the house. Though small enough to flush against a wall, this narrow two-tiered table is incredibly functional and streamlined, just as mid-century modern designers intended. Setting rich, polished wooden dishes on this white lacquer table catches the eye: an intriguing juxtaposition.

 

Think this home could get any more serene? Enter: the master bedroom. This room was designed to achieve ultimate relaxation and rejuvenation. White bed linens symbolize purity that allow you to begin and end each day with a clean slate. The white bedding and walls also serve to keep the room looking fresh and clean, while the subtle blues and grays in geometric patterns give shape and interest to the room.

As we’ve explained before, part of the mid-century modern look was bringing the outside, in. The decorations featured above the headboard are custom-made driftwood art, reminiscent of birds’ nests or even sea urchins! Up for interpretation, these beautifully unique pieces are meant to remind the inside onlooker of the wonderful world outside.

This home in the Heights serves as an urban oasis for this young, professional couple to escape from bustling city life with their beloved dog. Incorporating natural elements and hazy gray-blue tones with clean, crisp lines and white lacquer achieve the mid-century modern look with sophistication, ease, and simplicity. 

 

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Bathroom: What is Mid-Century Modern? (A short summary)

Not sure exactly what kind of interior design classifies as 'mid-century modern?' Well, you gon' learn today! If you've been a loyal follower of S Squared Design, you've probably seen this term tossed around to describe many projects and pieces. So, what exactly is mid-century modern? 

Obviously, there's an apparent, overarching theme among mid-century modern interiors, but the exact definition of this term is slightly more elusive since styles in this genre can vary so greatly.

 

Mid-century modern design in America developed roughly from the 1930s through 1960s when the middle class attitudes about wilderness, nature, technology, mobility, and city life began to materialize in interior design. To demonstrate, this remodeled master bathroom employs essential aspects of mid-century modern style from monumental design to minute details. (Hint: keep an eye out for tiling, fixtures, patterns, and appliances that bring elements of nature into a highly functional space!)

  

Ceramic, ceramic, ceramic!
With its sleek curves and shiny glaze that disperse light throughout a space, it's no wonder that ceramic is a material of choice for mid-century modern designs. (Look up Heath Ceramics founded in 1948!)

Geometry in Nature

Ever seen honey comb in a bee hive? This tessellation of hexagons patterns the floor in this master bathroom with dark grout and bright white tiles. This contrast emphasizes the shape as found in nature, but the small size of the tiles allows this pattern to subtly complement the rest of the bathroom's design.  

Vintage and the Elements

The white ceramic and silver appliances are of course reminiscent of the 1950s. This vintage design juxtaposed with slate stone tiles is another wonderful example of mid-century modern design: natural elements with the 'latest' technology. 

So, there you have it! A quick run-down of mid-century modern style: where nature meets technology in a sleek, 1950s-esque design!

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Urban Residence: The Dwelling of a Homo Sapiens Urbano

At the turn of the twentieth century, a novel and peculiar species of man evolved: the homo sapiens urbano. Distinct from other species of man, the homo sapiens urbano tactfully merges elements of the outside concrete jungle with the sacred space inside their home. This urban residence transforms into a serene escape from city life while keeping consistent with the neutral palette and pops of color seen in any bustling cityscape. 

 

 As a functional city requires a straightforward, streamlined layout; so does a functional home. The homo sapiens urbano has a heightened awareness of this necessity, as evidenced in the minimalist philosophy that defines the style of this clean living space.

Additionally, this species proves to be quite territorial, marking its space with unique artifacts such as the custom paintings and artwork displayed throughout the home. These offer opportunity for abstract thought, profound reflection, or simply for aesthetic admiration for the artist.  

The dwelling place of the homo sapiens urbano achieves balance between dark and light by using slightly muted tones of orange and yellow that accent the stone and light sapphire painted walls. 

Just as blooming flora and bright fauna diversify an environment, the color, shape, and texture of pillows, rugs, throws, upholstery and other accent textiles simultaneously offer diversity and comfort to this urban abode.  

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A Designers Home: Designing for Our New Nest

My husband and I have been renting for the last few years and this year finally were ready to buy our first home. Hooray! Now this is a very exciting time in our lives, but home ownership comes with different priorities than a rental. Since I am an Interior Designer my focus for the house is, well, a showcase of my work. A place for me to experiment and do "crazy" things throughout the home and make it reflect us and our lifestyle. We are young, outgoing, social and are up for trying new things! So our house should and is going to reflect that. My husband, well he is an engineer, so you can see how we balance each others ideas when deciding what order to do things in the house are. We are both problem solvers and we love that. So solving our homes problems is what we are going to do.  

Now to give you a little background on the home, its a one-story brick, built in 1958, three bedroom, 1 &1/2 bath, two-car garage. Nice little yard for our dog and our future herb garden(already planted some spinach and kale). Now think of the 1950's, its one of my favorite as far as architecture, our house is still mostly traditional looking from the street, but we have lots of plans to make it more modern and well reflect is without changing the architecture too much. I want everything we do to be a surprise, so when we complete a project that is when I will show you before and afters, for now use your imagination! :) Starting from the curb, brick front is always a great place to start and ours is a mix of orange and light grey brick, almost like a white wash in some areas, currently the garage doors, shutters and siding are a light blue, typical of the 50's for sure. That will be change when we get new garage doors, we are looking at doing a fresh light/medium grey (Sherwin Williams - 7044 Amazing Gray) and doing the door and window trim a fresh white (Sherwin Williams - 7004 Snowbound). These color changes will make a huge difference in the homes curb appeal. To finish off the front we will do our new 50's inspired front door in bold turquoise (Sherwin Williams - 6951 Cote D' Azur), large stainless steel house numbers, a new vintage modern entry light and we currently have round columns, we will convert these to square ones finished in white. 

 Something kind of like this!

Now that you are excited to come inside, let's talk about our plans for the first room you see, the living room. The first we are going to do its paint the walls (Sherwin Williams - 6471 Hazel) This color is in our drapes we selected from IKEA(yes we have to keep costs low in some areas in order to be able to splurge in others) I loved the pattern so that's why we went with them. Now another surface that has to be addressed in the flooring, we are going to do solid tiger striped bamboo throughout the entire home minus the bathrooms. Now the floors and walls have been addressed in the living room, the layout is ideal for tv watching and leaves a good flow path to the dining and kitchen areas, as well as the hall to the bedrooms. There is a small coat closet that is preventing a more open floor plan and we plan to take that out so we have a 8' opening between the dining and living areas, this will make it ideal for entertaining and overall open feeling throughout the house. After that, furniture and accessories will come in, our style is what i would call, vintage modern rustic industrial. A mouthful I know, but we love natural woods, industrial pipe, clean lines, with a touch of history(vintage). Moving on to the dining area, oh the 50's full of colors we may not select today, but currently the floor is a medallion, gold colored vinyl tile, not our favorite but that will be replaced with the bamboo flooring. Now sometime between the 50's and now the dining area got some wood paneling installed(which is currently painted yellow). Sorry for those of you who love it but it has got to go! It will be replaced by new drywall and fresh paint (most likely Sherwin Williams - 7065 Argos), we have turquoise chevron drapery panels that will go on the sliding doors out to the patio. And a bold gray and turquoise area rug will sit under our new dining table, which we are going to make out of reclaimed wood with a metal and wood double pedestal base. As far chairs, we will be using clear acrylic chairs so the beauty of the table is seen and not blocked by chairs. We have a 50's walnut sideboard that will act as our bar area for entertaining and wall shelves above for bottles and glasses. A new chandelier will go above the table, we love urban chandy and previously had a chandelier made by them, but we moved and are in need of a different size.  Moving into the kitchen, for those of you who know me, I take pride in making a kitchen as efficient as possible, no need for a giant kitchen, you just need the right layout and fittings for your cabinets. A black wood grain cabinet finish will be used and fitted with modern chrome handles, the counter will be a light gray Cesar stone(similar to silestone but more monochromatic colors.  As for a sink, we cook A LOT, so the kitchen is very important, but back the sink, now most people would go with a stainless steel sink but we wanted to do a black granite composite single basin sink. This allows us to clean big pots and we have had double basin sinks and they don't seem to work for us. For the faucet, we are going to use a professional kitchen faucet, this will make it easy to clean, wash, and look great while doing it. 

Like this!

Moving on to the private spaces, the hall bath is pretty in pink tiles right now but we will soon change that to some grey, more modern tiles with stark white and black accents. A 5' vanity will be great with a large mirrored medicine cabinet over the sink with plenty of storage. new lighting and a new tile tub surround all the way to the ceiling. The other bathroom needs a little more attention, currently it is a half bath attached to the master bedroom. Back in the 50's this was common for some reason, but lucky for us we have space in the closet to make another full bathroom. Yay! We will have a frame-less shower with the flooring the same throughout, a trough sink so two people can get ready at the same time. We are going to do hex floor tiles(a little vintage for the new bath) and simple subway tiles. A few shower cubbies done in an accent tile and a rain shower-head. Going to be a great open bathroom perfect for two people to use. Since the master bathroom is taking the closet, we will be adding a wall-to-wall floor to ceiling built-in wardrobe on one wall of the room, with all the interior fittings we need to make it as efficient as possible. The guest bedroom will be crisp, clean and inviting for our guests, that will be a big surprise for everyone! Now I have to have a home office, this is my creative space. A place were I ponder ideas for my upcoming projects and dream of new innovative ways to design. So this too will be a creative, unique surprise, and it will definitely be awesome!

So those are the plans! There will be more to come as we complete these projects! Stay tuned and I hope you are inspired to work on finishing your home! 

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