Text: Lydia Somerville
Photography: Jean Allsopp
Author and designer Betty Lou Phillips brings her signature look to a new house by infusing it with traditional designs filtered through a modern perspective.
When out-of-town clients approached Betty Lou Phillips to help them renovate and decorate a Dallas house, she was delighted to deliver her signature mix of elegance and ease. But Phillips, an award-winning designer and author of 14 books on French and Italian style, first endeavored to get to know her new clients and to fashion a home tailored to their tastes.
“For starters, I listened carefully,” she says, “aiming to respect their likes and dislikes. I saw the home not as a showplace but as a welcoming, warm invitation to their friends, children, and grandchildren.”
The house, overlooking a serene park, was in an ideal location, but it needed work. “We replaced existing flooring, opened and enlarged doorways, added windows, and changed the hardware,” she says. Limestone floors in the entry give way to walnut parquet in the dining room and the living room. Pretty French doors allow flow between the house and the pool area.
The entry hall bears hallmarks of Phillips’s sophisticated style. An antique Louis XVI settee backed by a large mirror greets visitors with confidence. “Rather than the expected chair, table, and lamp, a mirror and artwork offset the weight of the staircase and create interest,” says Phillips.
In the dining room, French influences abound. The new walnut floors take on special visual interest from a parquet pattern. French chairs surround a round table from the owner’s previous house. A carved walnut buffet, also from the former house, gets a fresh look in the airy blue and white room. Graceful French doors are flanked with silk panels.
Throughout the living room and dining room, walls are Venetian plaster in a pale champagne color. In a signature Phillips vignette, two paintings hung off center over a chest form a composition with a table lamp. “Arranging art is an art in itself,” she says. “A small painting hung beneath a larger one arouses interest.”
The living room features the client’s favorite color, aqua. A painting bought after the project was complete features the bold hue, as do the silk curtains. “Silk communicates a subtle elegance more grounded than, say, an opulent brocade,” says Phillips.
A pair of white tufted sofas, along with an ottoman and armchair covered in compatible prints, surrounds a mirrored table. In one corner of the living room, a grand piano sits under an arrangement of framed sheet music of the homeowner’s favorite musicals.
As a child, Phillips raised and showed American quarter horses and fell in love with the colors of the hides. “The library in the house reflects my love for chestnut, sorrel, and bay,” she says, “along with a myriad of foliage greens that are meaningful in my life.” A set of botanicals hung in a grid over the sofa gives the cozy room impact. Though the paneling is painted a rich brown, the light fabrics and glass accents keep the room light and bright.
The kitchen and adjacent sitting room repeat the blues of the living room. Here, though, fabrics are more casual and the furniture, more flexible. A pair of rectangular coffee tables pushed together adds versatility. The kitchen itself is polished and replete with conveniences. “Both the husband and wife enjoy cooking, so it is equipped with everything they might possibly need,” says Phillips.
In the bedroom, the designer intensified the blue and cream palette of the house. A vivid blue headboard rests against walls the color of creamy coffee. Slightly oversized furniture comfortably fits the large room. “The tall headboard supports the size of the room,” she says. “Then again, we are in the midst of an upholstered headboard revival.”
Phillips had the bedside chests custom built slightly taller than standard to match the height of the bed. The striped rug adds a note of casual flair. That deft mingling of traditional and contemporary illustrates Phillips’s abiding design principle—“moving forward while looking back.”
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