Houzz Tours
Houzz Tour: Patterns and Prints Play Nicely in Virginia
Colorful floral, striped, geometric and leopard prints bring vibrance to an Old Town Alexandria row house
The couple uses the living room as a comfy place to sneak off with a newspaper or a book. Because entertaining also happens here, Nelson wanted to get in as much seating as possible.
Nelson started the space with a pair of floral chairs covered in a Scalamandré fabric. The same fabric covers a pair of throw pillows on the sofa covered in a China Seas fabric. The custom Galleria rug is a replica of a rug Nelson designed for a client. She loved it so much she had one made for herself.
Nelson started the space with a pair of floral chairs covered in a Scalamandré fabric. The same fabric covers a pair of throw pillows on the sofa covered in a China Seas fabric. The custom Galleria rug is a replica of a rug Nelson designed for a client. She loved it so much she had one made for herself.
The den sits at the back of the house. This is where the TV is, opposite the sofa, and where the couple spend most of their time. When they moved in, they took out a wood-burning stove that projected into the room and added bookcases around the sofa. It’s a sunny space with a brick floor and paneling around the mantel that seemed to call for a traditional and colorful approach. Nelson developed the color palette the same way she always does: She falls in love with a multicolored fabric — the Hill Brown paisley on the chairs, in this case — and lets that be the springboard.
About her approach to pattern-mixing, she says, “When I see a piece of furniture with a solid fabric, it just looks so heavy to me. A pattern adds some lightness.” She likes to combine a “looser” pattern like the paisley with a more structured, geometric print, as on the window’s Roman shade. Mixing scale is also part of her method: The small-scale print on the lamps contrasts with the larger print on the blue sofa pillows. “The more patterning, the more interesting a room is. It feels fresher and lighter to me,” Nelson says.
The custom leopard-print rug “looks amazing next to the red brick floor and keeps the room lively while respecting the tradition of the house,” Nelson says. The rocking chair under the original pass-through to the kitchen is the same one she rocked her children in when they were babies.
Find wood rocking chairs
The custom leopard-print rug “looks amazing next to the red brick floor and keeps the room lively while respecting the tradition of the house,” Nelson says. The rocking chair under the original pass-through to the kitchen is the same one she rocked her children in when they were babies.
Find wood rocking chairs
The yellow linen dining chairs are treated for stain protection, and the walls are adorned with art from the couple’s collection of landscape paintings. Most of the artworks in the home are pieces they’ve stumbled upon serendipitously. Nelson is a firm believer that “if you set to buy something specific, you never find it.”
The dining room’s tablescape features two butterfly urns from Bungalow 5 and four Daum flower vessels with hot pink flowers. “I’m a terrible flower arranger so I’ve learned that a series of the same thing always looks good. It’s a simple way to have flowers without stressing too much,” Nelson says.
The dining room’s tablescape features two butterfly urns from Bungalow 5 and four Daum flower vessels with hot pink flowers. “I’m a terrible flower arranger so I’ve learned that a series of the same thing always looks good. It’s a simple way to have flowers without stressing too much,” Nelson says.
Even the kitchen presented an opportunity to mix pattern and color. Nelson sought out patterns that contrasted positive and negative space: The hand-painted backsplash tile, from Architectural Ceramics, emphasizes the negative white space with a very small blue motif, whereas the wallpaper in the cabinets is a very dense pattern with an even mix of negative and positive.
One of the most fascinating aspects of this kitchen is the way the designer treated the 23-year-old cherry cabinets. She felt the color looked a little “raw” and wanted to darken it. She knew that sun darkens natural cherry, so she purchased a sunlamp that sufferers of Seasonal Affective Disorder use to ease the winter doldrums and blasted the wood for hours at a time. Doing so also allowed the new dishwasher panel to blend seamlessly with the old cabinetry.
Upholstered piano stools in a large-scale modern quilt fabric mix blue and white in roughly equal proportions. The stools rest under an antique oak library table.
Upholstered piano stools in a large-scale modern quilt fabric mix blue and white in roughly equal proportions. The stools rest under an antique oak library table.
A warm, inviting breakfast area is located in the hallway that faces the kitchen. There’s a new skylight above the bar stools to provide natural light. The avian-themed wallpaper is one of the designer’s favorites.
The master bedroom is a trove of special details. It’s a “sunny, happy” place with plenty of white, wood, and warm yellow. A new staircase replaces a library ladder that connected the room to the loft and rooftop deck. Nelson’s carpenter designed the scalloped pattern on the stringer. “I often find that when you work with good people, they often come up with great ideas. Collaboration makes every job better,” Nelson says.
Unlike the rest of the home, where Nelson uses multiple patterns and colors to add interest, here she uses two tone-on-tone yellow patterns: one on the wallpaper and one on the shades, pillows, blanket and chair. The bird fabric on the custom accent pillow is from Jab Anstoetz.
Bed: Pottery Barn Teen
Bed: Pottery Barn Teen
Of all the rooms, the guest room came together the fastest and easiest. “This is where my mind naturally goes,” Nelson says. The pattern-heavy space features Restoration Hardware twin beds with headboard and footboards covered in a colorful fabric that looks like a watercolor painting.
For the foot of the bed, two white leather benches from CB2 feature a Schumacher cabana stripe fabric.
For the foot of the bed, two white leather benches from CB2 feature a Schumacher cabana stripe fabric.
The draperies ended up being a real labor of love. Normally, drapery workrooms are inclined to center the print as prominently as possible on the front-facing pleats so that it doesn’t get lost in the folds. It is generally assumed that it’s the motif that is to be featured, not the negative space around it. In this case, though, the blue inkblot design was “too much,” so Nelson had the drapes taken down and re-pleated so you’d see more white.
The rug was the final piece of the puzzle, as it often is for Nelson. She had wanted a certain size but couldn’t find it, so she ordered two: One runs horizontally in the area in front of the beds and one is between the beds.
Lamps: Dana Gibson
Lamps: Dana Gibson
The master bathroom is “very spatially challenged,” Nelson says, so she had to “maximize everything.” Though she prefers pedestal sinks, she knew she needed the storage of a fuller vanity, so she had one custom-painted and sized to the space. Still, she didn’t want the vanity to go all the way to the floor, so there’s another cabinet under the window to make up for the loss of the extra drawer.
A charcoal encaustic tile covers the floors and picks up the color in the Roman shade fabric and the hand-painted wall treatment. The doorknobs are antique glass ovals.
More home tours: Apartments | Small Homes | Colorful Homes | Contemporary Homes | Eclectic Homes | Farmhouses | Midcentury Homes | Modern Homes | Ranch Homes | Traditional Homes | Transitional Homes | All
A charcoal encaustic tile covers the floors and picks up the color in the Roman shade fabric and the hand-painted wall treatment. The doorknobs are antique glass ovals.
More home tours: Apartments | Small Homes | Colorful Homes | Contemporary Homes | Eclectic Homes | Farmhouses | Midcentury Homes | Modern Homes | Ranch Homes | Traditional Homes | Transitional Homes | All
House at a Glance
Who lives here: Designer Susan Nelson and her husband
Location: Alexandria, Virginia
Size: 2,200 square feet (204 square meters)
When designer Susan Nelson and her husband downsized from the family home where they raised their children to a charming row house in Old Town Alexandria, her husband became her client. After 20 years of living with exuberant color on every available surface, her husband was ready to tone things down a bit — but only a bit. With no structural work to be done, Nelson devoted her attention to balancing her “client’s” need for a serene and comfortable home with her own design sensibility to create a personality-filled space that’s far from colorless and very pattern-friendly.
“It’s not open-concept in the modern sense, but the rooms really are somewhat open to each other,” Nelson says of her home’s layout. Just out of view is the front door to the left that opens directly into the living room.