Tennessee-based designer Kathy Patton plays off her favorite hues for both her everyday palette and the holiday season.
When Kathy Patton was 15, she took out a subscription to a shelter magazine and fawned over a room Mario Buatta had created at the Kips Bay Decorator Show House. It was the beginning of her love of design. While she started her career with a decade in marketing for a major restaurant chain, she found her way to interiors following a move from Atlanta to Macon, Georgia, where she designed for friends and family. As her business grew substantially, she later rebranded her business as Kathy Patton Designs when she settled in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Working in both the residential and commercial realms, Patton strives to get to know her clients well to create spaces that reflect their preferences and lifestyle. “I want to know about their collections, what pieces are special to them, and how they live,” she says. “My design is very intentional; what I come up with is custom to each client and to the location.”
Starting Over
After designing what she thought would be her forever home on Chattanooga’s Lookout Mountain, a divorce led to a move. “Sometimes we find ourselves having to start over,” Patton says. Drawing on her strengths, she recalls, “My first thought was that I have to make a new home for myself.”
She found a builder who was starting work on a charming home in a nearby neighborhood, and she was able to augment the plans to make it her own. Initially, she increased the ceiling height, changed out window and door selections, and added a Chippendale railing to the staircase—a feature that speaks to her love of traditional aesthetics.
Since building in 2018, she has continued to make the house her own with updates that suit her lifestyle: The screened porch was converted to a four-season sunroom with a gas log fireplace, and the second story’s walk-in attic was finished and completely customized to become the studio of Kathy Patton Designs.
Timeless Pieces
Of course, it wasn’t just the bones of the house that excited Patton. Thinking back to the show house that drew her in as a teenager, this home needed character with layers of pattern and varying hues to truly become hers. Noting that she uses color judiciously, Patton opted for white walls and gray cabinetry that allow fabrics and accessories to introduce more vibrant accents.
“I like to anchor a room with an antique that gives gravitas and patina and then mix in acrylic pieces and original art,” she says. The practice is one she follows both for clients and in her own spaces. “If you’re going to make it timeless, you have to have timeless pieces,” she adds.
In this home, two of the standout decorative accents—screens made of Zuber wallpaper panels—are classics that have been with her for decades. “I came across these panels at the ADAC [Atlanta Decorative Arts Center] and bought the remnants that had been ripped off the walls,” she recalls. After her cabinetmaker created boards to mount them, she had them professionally restored. Today, one is a focal point of the living room while another hangs prominently in her bedroom.
Additionally, collections of majolica and Wedgwood hang on the walls and adorn tabletops to bring character and color throughout the house. “Part of design is collecting,” she says. “I’m a bit of an Anglophile and also interested in French pieces, and I can’t help but be drawn to blue and white,” she says of her penchant for the color pairing that often repeats in her finds.
A Festive Layer
At Christmastime, there’s an additional festive layer that welcomes family and neighbors. Playing to her home’s everyday palette, she opts for a blue, green, and metallic palette for the home’s seasonal accessories, which are artfully placed and adorned by stylist Brandon Carruth of Carruth Concepts. “Red is not a part of my everyday decor, so you’ll only see it on the berries at the front door’s planters,” she notes. “I let the colors in my house lead the way.”
The result is a home filled with charm and life that’s as welcoming during the season as it is throughout the year.
Interior Design: Kathy Patton, Kathy Patton Designs
