The Arboreal Garden In The Shade Powder Room

My clients were excited about their newly purchased home perched high in the hills over the south Bay Area, but since the house was built in the early 90s, they were desperate to update some of the spaces. Their main powder room at the entrance to this grand home was a letdown: bland, featureless, dark, and it left anyone using it with the feeling they had just spent some time in a prison cell.

These clients spent many years living on the east coast and brought with them a wonderful classical sense for their interiors—so I created a space that would give them that feeling of Old World tradition.

My idea was to transform the powder room into a destination by creating a garden room feeling. To disguise the size and shape of the room, I used a gloriously colorful wallcovering from Cole & Son featuring a pattern of trees and birds based on Chinoiserie wallcoverings from the nineteenth century. Sconces feature gold palm leaves curling around milk glass diffusers. The vanity mirror has the shape of an Edwardian greenhouse window, and the new travertine floors evoke a sense of pavers meandering through an arboreal path. With a vanity of midnight blue, and custom faucetry in chocolate bronze and polished nickel, this powder room is now a delightful garden in the shade.

Since pictures speak a thousand words, here is a peek at a side-by-side Before and After!

If you are suffering from PRB (Powder Room Blues), give me a call. I have the cure.

Happy designing!

The Life Aquatic Powder Room by Fiorito Interior Design

When a client in Santa Cruz decided to add on to her Arts and Crafts bungalow, she created enough space for a new powder room, and we looked to the very nearby ocean for inspiration. This coastal-themed bathroom features a very special wallpaper called Acquario designed by legendary Italian designer Piero Fornasetti, and made by Cole & Son in England. White wainscoting and a navy blue vanity anchor the room. And two iron and rope sconces with a wonderful maritime sense light this delightfully salty space.

Happy designing!

Gondola Wallpaper by Cole & Son

Regular readers will know of my love for unique wallpaper and I can't stand it anymore...I have to share with you Cole & Son's gorgeous Gondola pattern, available in several different colorways. Of course my favorite is the dark navy background (because it looks the most like a romantic, inky-deep night sky) with lanterns illuminated in pink or orange.

But the colorway with a green ground is handsome...

...and the white ground with a black and gold design, seen here in a powder room of the home of Jane Scott Hodges, is also striking.

Happy designing!

Vivienne Westwood Squiggle Wallpaper

There always was, is now--and I'm certain always will be--a huge link between the worlds of fashion and interiors. One of my all-time favorite fashion designers is the amazing, incomparable Dame Vivienne Westwood. If you don't know her work, I suggest you take a Google trip and ogle her phenomenal creations. And one of the things you will find when you research her and her work is a pattern she created for her 1981 Pirates Collection that shows up time and again on shoes, bags, shirts, and now on wallpaper!

Her classic Squiggle pattern is a sinuous yet orderly progression of a jagged rope coiling back and forth...and venerable wallcovering manufacturer Cole & Son makes, in conjunction with Westwood herself, a Squiggle wallpaper which comes in many different colorways. Available through Lee Jofa/Kravet.

In this sitting room below, not only are the walls clad in the Westwood Squiggle but the furniture is graced with the Squiggle as well! Photo by Paul Costello.

Gen and Ben Sohr of the design firm Pencil and Paper used the Westwood Squiggle wallcovering in the entry of their Nashville home.

And here is an outfit from Dame Westwood's original Pirates Collection featuring a yellow and orange squiggle shirt with matching tasseled waist sash.

I had wanted a pair of Westwood signature Squiggle Pirate boots since I first saw them in 1981...and finally in 2008, I made a pilgrimage to World's End, her original boutique in Chelsea, to take home a coveted pair (it's not an impulse buy if one has wanted something for over 30 years!). And here they are:

Dame Westwood, still fashionable at 74...

Dame Vivienne Westwood, DBE

If you are a fashionista who would love a bit of Westwood in your home, please contact me! I would so love to spread the Squiggle!
To learn more about Westwood, click here and visit her fashion website here.

Happy designing!