Atlanta Home Redesign: GordonDunning Crafts an Eclectic, Artful Oasis for a Young Family

Functionally, the clients wanted to be able to host family and friends in their home for special occasions as well as have it work well for their young children on a daily basis. The home needed to be taken from predictable and plain to a space that truly shared their layered life together. The wife grew up spending much of her time on their family’s ranch in Colorado, and the husband grew up on farmland in New Zealand. Additionally, they all had a soft spot for a British design. The designers took inspiration from all of these aesthetics, infused with southern influences to give it a real sense of place.

To embrace the client’s love of the outdoors and childhoods immersed in nature, a scenic mural was chosen for the kitchen dining area, and another nature scheme is featured in the bathroom wallpaper. Playful forms such as fringe dining room lights, bright pink sofas, and dramatic ceiling and wall coverings play with more muted, traditional furnishings for an eclectic balance that embraces cozy quirk and layers of pattern and texture. The clients had a fabulous collection of western artwork as well as New Zealand artwork, which were carefully incorporated into each space, mixed with British Scott Antique Market finds and vintage prints sourced by the designers.

One thing that the designers truly appreciated was that the clients were very conscious about waste. There were several aspects of the design that they all iterated on multiple times in order to save as much as they could about the original home instead of filling up a landfill. One example was the kitchen cabinetry—instead of replacing the perimeter cabinetry, they opted to add millwork to the existing cabinets to take them to the ceiling, adding a fresh coat of paint and updated hardware. They did update the island stone, further modernizing the whole space.