2023 Hampton Designer Showhouse Mirrors Today’s Tastes

In the world of high style interior design, the longstanding platform of the designer showhouse has traditionally been décor’s answer to the fashion runway.

Not only are showhouses effective in allowing people to experience many individual designers’ points of view in situ at once, they also provide a showcase for the latest and greatest in products, from furniture, textiles, flooring, wallpapers and lighting to kitchen cabinetry, surface materials, appliances, bath fixtures, fittings, tile and stone. Of interest now, too, are the recent advances in smart home technology that are also seeking exposure, and it becomes apparent that a typical designer showhouse has about a thousand moving parts.

Apply the fact that all of this is being done with the contributions of scores of talented designers, each hoping for their big moment, and typically under the most impossibly short time constraints imaginable, and you’ve got a pressure cooker of fabulousness. The dividends are meaningful not only for the participating designers and the sponsoring suppliers but also for the worthy nonprofit organizations that the most distinguished showhouses support.

For the past 24 years — pivoting to a virtual/video mode only for 2020 — the Hampton Designer Showhouse has been the mothership of this convention of décor on the East End and has just unveiled its 2023 version, once again benefiting Stony Brook Southampton Hospital. With a few recent exceptions, this showhouse has typically been mounted in newly built houses, provided by a developer in the hope of bringing attention to their latest offering. This year’s entry, designed by architect Lucy Liu of Southampton and built by the father-son team of Tom and Douglas Cavallo of Cavallo Building, is an of-the-moment 9,000-square-foot modern farmhouse, clad in gray-stained cedar shingles, stark, dark bronze windows and touches of standing seam metal roofing, set on 2 acres. The work of more than 20 designers is being showcased.

Some showhouses are launching pads for both careers and ideas. Others are mirrors of the current state of interior and landscape design, making a case that this is what people want and how they want to live. This year’s Hampton Designer Showhouse is a little bit of both.

Consider the large great room/kitchen combo stretching across the entire back façade of the house, a ubiquitous feature of most newly built Hamptons spec houses. The kitchen and dining portions of the space, by Michelle Gerson Designs in collaboration with Ciuffo Cabinetry, followed a familiar form but added the unique detail of round glass portholes on the cabinet fronts. More space age/Jetsons than nautical, it’s an unexpected visual pop.

Designer and TV personality Mikel Welch’s family room section suggests that a neutral palette with organic accents is the most pleasing décor strategy on a heavily wooded lot, allowing the colors of nature to provide relief from the taupes, beiges, browns and whites that dominate the space. “This is actually the most color I’ve ever used,” said the designer. Also shy on color but highly styled, nonetheless, is a covered terrace by Danielle Rose Design. A pair of hanging chairs beckon for napping or rosé sipping.

Other designers took a more classic, layered showhouse approach, with expressive wallpapers, statement lighting fixtures, unexpected color combinations and, heaven forbid, pieces of traditional brown furniture. These are the rooms that are memorable, as showhouses are meant to inspire rather than to simply serve as arrangements of stuff for sale. Case in point: Elissa Grayer’s dining room that not only sings with ideas but showcases a successful compromise between the traditional and the modern. Should anyone really put exquisite Fromental wallpaper in a beach house? Probably not, but it sure makes for a visual treat, as does the use of velvet, lacquer and Lucite. This is décor, as is Cami Weinstein’s butler’s pantry that features a dynamic plum and white wallpaper in a pattern that resembles the inside of a box of rigatoni. A backsplash crafted from wooden rods emphasizes the curvaceous theme.

Designer showhouse powder rooms are often overlooked, or assigned to first-timers looking to participate in a showhouse with manageable expense. Antonio Deloatch was undaunted by the small space and created an eye-catching jewel box.

“I love a powder room where you feel encapsulated,” Deloatch said. “Kravet’s ‘Striate’ wood-pulp wallcovering suggests the beach but in a modern way. I wanted a Hamptons vibe without going too coastal.”

Kohler fixtures and fittings, in a sophisticated gold (even the smart toilet, one of those “where has this been all my life?” kinda things, has a subtle gold band) completes the jewel box effect.

In today’s new builds, traditional living rooms have been greatly reduced in size if not eliminated completely. Cristiana Mascarenhas of Inplus Inc. channeled her Rio de Janeiro roots for her small space, featuring the work of Brazilian artists. One’s eye is immediately drawn to a dynamic end table by Paulo Alves. Crafted from Brazilian teak, it resembles a jumble of pickup sticks supporting a round glass top.

Upstairs, the hero moments are the primary suite by Shannon Wiley of Sea Green Designs, with its pure coastal palette of foggy grays, beiges, blues and greens, further expressed in pale gray walls faux-finished to resemble Venetian plaster. Tate Casper and Jordan Winston, of Tampa-based Oxford Design Studio, went the traditional route with their charming guest bedroom dominated by a metal canopy bed draped in linen and flanked by a pair of marble-topped antique chests. Subtle Rose Tarlow wallpaper lines the entire room, including the ceiling.

One of the most conversational rooms in the house is a second-floor lounge and bath by Garland Sullivan Design. Inspired by the Dos Equis advertising campaign featuring “The Most Interesting Man in the World,” with a healthy nod to Peter Beard, the American author and photographer with a penchant for all things African, it tells a story. From a zebra skin rug to an amusing Astek wallpaper depicting cavorting monkeys drinking from vodka bottles (amid hanging brassieres) to a gallery wall of celebrity photographs to yet another primate wallpaper by Kravet featuring a gorilla motif, it runs the gamut of zany eclecticism.

The penchant to treat the basements of Hamptons new builds with the same consideration as all other floors is in full force, what with its lavish media room and bar by Delrose Design Group, spa room by Keith Baltimore, complete with massage table and swirling Fromental wallpaper, a sexy bath by Susanne Kelley Design that is a study in matte black and gold (from Kohler’s fixtures and fittings to the hand-painted accent wall) to an equally sultry billiard room by Melanie Roy. The daughter of the late comedian Rodney Dangerfield, her childhood Manhattan apartment also had a billiard room, so she clearly knows a thing or two about pool tables. It shows.

The Hampton Designer Showhouse, located at 499 Broadway in Southampton, is open to the public on every Thursday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. through September 3. Admission is $40 and includes the showhouse journal. Visit 
hamptondesignershowhouse.com for more information.