Text and Styling: Margaret Zainey Roux
Photos: Casey McMurray
Simple, yet elegant.” Those three little words had a big impact on interior designer Betsey Hazard and became her mantra throughout the two-year design-build process of Missy and Ryan Hanemann’s Old Metairie home.
“My clients were so easygoing and open-minded but had just one request: to create a home that is simple, yet elegant,” says the founder and principal of New Orleans–based firm, House of Hazard Interiors. “I interpreted that as having rooms that are inviting and elevated with a seamless flow and sophisticated custom appointments.”
Elegant Old Metairie Home Blends European Style With Family-Friendly Comfort
Elegant Old Metairie Home Blends European Style With Family-Friendly Comfort
Elegant Old Metairie Home Blends European Style With Family-Friendly Comfort
Elegant Old Metairie Home Blends European Style With Family-Friendly Comfort
Elegant Old Metairie Home Blends European Style With Family-Friendly Comfort
Elegant Old Metairie Home Blends European Style With Family-Friendly Comfort
In collaboration with architect George Hopkins, Hazard set the framework for classic European interiors that reflect the homeowners’ extensive travels abroad while remaining in sync with their contemporary lifestyle. Elements such as groin vaulted ceilings, Venetian plaster walls, white oak paneling and floors, and limestone mantels lend patina and charm to the new structure nestled among the centuries-old oak trees on a sprawling lot just beyond New Orleans’ city limits. In the entry, Italian stone laid in an iconic Versailles pattern not only paves the floor but also lays the foundation for the palette. With its soothing greige hue with slightly bluish undertones, the stone heavily swayed Hazard’s color selections, particularly in the dining room and great room, where warm whites and neutrals mingle with blues that range from cool and crisp to rich and moody. Its weight and tumbled texture also exemplify the importance of strength, substance, and durability throughout the interiors.
Although the Hanemanns are technically empty nesters, their nest is never really empty. With six children and a dozen-plus grandchildren, forgiving finishes were essential. Handsome antique chests and case goods wear the markings of time, while stone tables and upholstery in high-performance linens, velvets, and leathers are wipeable and worry-free.
“There is no reason a room can’t be both beautiful and approachable—that’s why comfort is first and foremost in all of my designs,” Hazard says. “I strive to create spaces that look and feel just as good on a daily basis as they do on those special occasions when entertaining guests. I am thrilled when I see my clients sink into their chairs, lay on their couches, kick their feet up on their coffee tables, and actually use their rooms. For me, one of the biggest perks of the job is knowing that I’ve created spaces where happy memories are being made.”
To elevate the everyday, Hazard enlisted a team of artists and craftsmen to bring visual and tactile interest to some unlikely—and often underappreciated—interior elements. In the entry, she worked with a local blacksmith to produce wrought iron spindles with a contrasting burnished brass hatch pattern and brought in a decorative painter to disguise the television cabinet above the great room mantel with a de Gournay–inspired landscape.
The sink wall in the powder bath is another showstopper. Before construction even began, Hazard sourced a hand-carved limestone vessel sink and designed the room around it with a floating silver leaf vanity beneath it and an 18th-century mirror mounted to a sheet of antique mirrored glass above it. The surrounding walls are delicately hand-painted such that the brushstrokes are visible and convey depth and dimension when the sconces are aglow.
“It took ten different tradespeople to create this one little wall,” she says. “But it’s the thoughtful, unique appointments like these that makes a new house feel like a custom home.”
