What do you get when you bring the Manhattan vibe to the summer getaway the city’s residents love to escape to?
New York City-based designer Taylor Spellman has the answer.
As seen on Bravo’s “Yours, Mine or Ours,” Ms. Spellman is typically faced with reimagining a space to fit the needs of one couple, while her co-host, real estate agent Reza Farahan, tries to persuade the couple to purchase a new home. As she proves on the show, she is a seasoned interior designer, and no stranger to a challenge.
As part of a recent project, she successfully transformed a traditional Hamptons vacation home in Sag Harbor into a modern oasis.
Ms. Spellman typically designs and stages spaces such as apartments, lobbies, penthouses and showrooms, but the scale of the Sag Harbor project was only her first challenge. The real difficulty was not the size of the house, but the number of people who wanted their Hamptons-city hybrid dreams made into a reality.
Not one, but two young couples from New York City summoned Ms. Spellman’s talents for this project. A single couple can be hard to please, she said, but trying to fulfill four visions proved to be the most daunting task. Her solution came when she was able to find a rhythm within the clients’ luxe theme, as well as when she persuaded the homeowners to be bold and incorporate wallpaper into the design.
Ms. Spellman said that when thinks of the Hamptons, she pictures a place where people go to recharge and relax. Her hope was to keep this idea alive in her design while offering the homeowners the style and class of New York City—the best of both worlds. To meet the clients’ desire for a modern eclectic vibe in a comfortable setting meant using rich velvet and textures in everything from the bedspreads to the wallpaper. The theme was completed by a color palette of cobalt blues and sophisticated grays.
One of the main bedrooms, once bathed in white, is now a space that boasts gray wallpaper with a unique pattern, a reflection of the homeowners’ bold decision to explore other options besides paint. The wallpaper came from Calico, a bespoke wallpaper company in Brooklyn. The Calico Collection—the brand’s inaugural wallpaper collection—was originally inspired by a rare sample of antique paper found by chance in a New York curiosity shop. The specific design chosen for the Sag Harbor project, based on a detailed study of lunar photography, is called “Lunaris.”
When Ms. Spellman was just shy of 18 years old, she moved to New York City in pursuit of a dance career. Soon, she found that she enjoyed the stability of a regular paycheck and transferred to Fordham University at Lincoln Center, where she studied business. Shortly after graduation, she launched her own interior design firm. Today, Taylor Spellman New York is made up of a team who, according to their website, are hardworking, no-nonsense, fast-talking women who work harder and play the hardest.
That team was enlisted for the Sag Harbor project. The sprawling 5,000-square-foot house, located on Deerfield Avenue between the coast of Little Peconic Bay and Noyac Hills Park, features six bedrooms and four bathrooms. As many hands as possible were needed to make the new designs come to life.
Products from designers Jonathan Adler, Z Gallerie, Robert Allen, Michell Gold & Bob Williams, West Elm, and CB2, among others, were incorporated to make the glamorous getaway spot complete.