Stop and smell the wallpaper

The living room is the first thing you see and the introduction to everything after it, so it had to set expectations. The home's original fireplace was long gone, and a bulky wood surround stood in its place taking up more of the room than it earned.

What replaced it is the piece we are proudest of in this house. One inch by eighteen inch tile in a soft pink, set in a one third pattern that reads as gentle horizontal banding, with curved corners and every outside edge mitered. The art TV rests on an articulating arm that folds into a recess behind it, so it sits flush and behaves like art rather than a screen.

The ceiling carries a leaf mural that plays with scale and keeps the pattern overhead, which let the original brick wall stay exactly as we found it. A geometric rug pulls the same colors back down to the floor in a more orderly way.

The room is long and rectangular, which had been a furniture problem for the owners for years. Rather than fight the shape we used it, building two conversation areas with a purple daybed in the middle. On a quiet night it is the best seat in the house for the fire. When they entertain it splits the room into two groups who can still talk across it.

At some point in this home's life, an evil-doer put a bathroom in the dining room and took half the usable square footage with it. What was left worked as a gallery you passed through on the way somewhere else, not a room anybody stayed in.

We relocated that bathroom to a small hall off the kitchen and gave this room its footprint back. It seats eight now, and it has turned into the room everyone ends up in.

The floral mural is the loudest thing in the house and it has earned the right to be. Custom paneling and trim frame it, and we ran a picture rail a few inches below the crown molding, partly for the detail and partly so art can hang without anyone putting a nail through the wallpaper. French doors open to the patio and bring in light and cross ventilation.

The mudroom sits just off the kitchen and leads to the backyard, which makes it the hardest working room in the house.

We treated every surface in here. A swirling wallpaper mural, a custom tile floor, and steel flower light fixtures on the ceiling. It is the least colorful room in the house, but the new black casing creates the same contrast moments that run everywhere else, and the border in the floor tile pulls its color straight from the kitchen.

Function drove the rest. A bench with storage, ample hooks for coats and bags, a drop zone for keys and mail, and closed storage for dog supplies, shoes, and whatever the kitchen cannot hold.

We wanted the house to change its mind upstairs. The main level is bright and busy and full of pattern, so the second floor drops the tone into something quieter and more saturated.

Navy runs across the walls, the trim, the crown, and the casing, which makes the room feel enveloping rather than decorated. The camel ceiling and bedding warm all that cool blue, and without them the room would read cold.

Behind the bed, geometric wallpaper panels sit inside custom trim so they read as framed artwork rather than an accent wall. Pattern still shows up in this room, it just behaves. That black and white geometry repeats through the suite and carries into the bath next door.

The existing laundry room offered very little in the way of storage, organization, or style, so we changed all three.

Rich green cabinetry with oversized brass knobs ties to the gold in the counter and the gold circles in the floor tile, which is one of our favorites in the whole house though we would not say that in front of the others.

Added cabinetry and an open shelf handle the storage, a hanging bar takes drying clothes, and new counter space gives laundry somewhere to actually happen. The undermount sink and wall mounted faucet keep cleanup simple.