Broad Strokes From The Hampton Designer Showhouse

In today’s “spec” specials, architectural detail is minimalized and sheetrock acreage is de rigueur.

What to do with soaring flat walls, huge backsplashes and fields of number-three oak floors? Ceilings that flatten to less than celestial beauty need more than a pinhead central fixture to liven what’s above.

Viewing the Hampton Designer Showhouse can draw the hapless attendee into a bold set of solutions, where few dare to tread.

The entry foyer designed by Lee W. Robinson, soars into the ether-sphere but is willingly tamed by a clever use of horizontal stripes. Horizontal stripes are a fashion trick trumped up by clothing designers who wish to whittle down a lanky Olive Oyl-like figure. These sliced strips of alternating colors of grass cloth shrink this towering volume, linking an unwieldy space pierced by windows, doors and suspended balconies.

On the vast floor, cut shapes of broadloom mitered into Harlequin triangles effectively divide the space. All this is bound in Hermès orange, which makes a point.

The living room’s horse-themed ceiling broke up the heavy beams and slathered super-white paint into a checkerboard of stirrup stencils—an idea worth throwing on a bridle for.

The team from Lillian August severed their fields of sheetrock with suspended panels of grass cloth—paying homage to a traditional form of architectural articulation—and executed through the guise of picture frames hung carefully on the wall in the great room.

Old Town Crossing’s conservatory exhibited a zesty pattern that filled its space. A broad geometric carpet with an enormous repeat boldly anchored a window-filled room that could easily drift off into the farm views beyond. However, the eye-popping zigzag/black and white fabrics grabbed your attention.

Bakes and Company treated a usually bland kitchen backsplash to a sunray star burst of silvered tile. Grays, charcoals, whites and silvers vie for attention in this cooktop explosion.

Though modest in scale, the powder room caught graphic attention by alternating stripes (quite the theme of the day, along with grass cloth) of lacquered rubbery paint in taxicab yellow and pale aqua. A swarm of floating butterflies pinned to the wall broke up the buttery expanse.

In the second bedroom, Katie Leede & Company covered the sheetrock with a spidery swirl of brush-like blooms that drew the room together like a black widow’s web. A bit terrifying but nonetheless interesting, this wall fabric of her own design could go places.

The master bedroom’s sheetrock expanse was softened by a dream-like expressionist wash of terra-cotta peach and cream by Robert Passal Interior & Architectural Design. Painterly and ethereal, this wall covering successfully exuded the dreamlike state one hopes for in a master bedroom refuge.

The playroom used indestructible, reclaimed barn boards as wainscoting. It also made use of a World War-proof crocodile vinyl wallpaper that shimmered in its cave-like basement room.

Informative as always, showhouses showcase the flexing prowess of the frequently tamed designer, freed from constraints. This showhouse is quite broadly drawn with bold strokes. Never accused as timid, it can be attended as an expanding experience, especially as one takes particular notice to the deft handling of flavorless spaces.