Northshore Home magazine highlights the best in architectural design, new construction and renovations, interiors, and landscape design.
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/1006262
78 to a shimmering river that your yard includes a dock, there's only one thing for a designer to do: Make sure eve- rything emphasizes that gorgeous view. And when that designer is Lisa Duffy, owner, creative director, and lead designer at Andover-based Savoir Faire Home, you can be sure that everything else about the home's décor will also exemplify easy, beautiful waterfront living. Duffy's clients were a low-key couple who'd always dreamed of building a waterfront home. When that dream became a reality with Newburyport-based Bourque Quality Homes, they enlisted Duffy to lend her signature clean, organic aesthetic to their newly built three-story shingle-style home in Salisbury. "They wanted it chic and sophisticated, but they didn't want anything dressy," Duffy says. "Because there is a lot of natural light, anything too glossy, too polished, too chromey would have felt overdone for this house." The resulting design is bright and airy, with lots of whites, grays, and taupes to emphasize the natu- ral light that pours into the home through its many windows and even entire walls of glass. It's a space that feels effortless and unstudied but still elegant and polished. "Nothing feels like it was necessarily planned, but you know there was attention to every detail," Duffy says. Among those details are organic touches that draw the beauty of the natural world inside, like a glass- topped driftwood end table in the living room; accents of coral and seaglass; a chandelier that combines crystal beads and natural hemp rope, and another made of oyster shells; and whitewashed, cracked natural tree stumps that can double as stools or end tables. "It's all those elements that just make it feel like we didn't buy a room of furniture and plop it in there," Duffy says. The floors are similarly natural, made of white oak boards of random lengths and widths that are finished with wax to keep that clean, soft palette. But there are also pops of color and texture throughout the house that make everything more interesting. Along one wall, for instance, is a blue and white watercolor wallpaper that evokes gently rippling water. "It anchored the room," Duffy says. "It was so bright, so airy, it just gave the room a finishing touch." There are also exciting and often unexpected elements of visual interest throughout, like porthole windows that echo the home's location. The bright, clean kitchen, with its quartzite countertops, Sub-Zero wine refrigerator, and Details are made up of organic touches that draw the beauty of the natural world inside, including accents of coral and seaglass; a chandelier made of oyster shells; and whitewashed, cracked natural tree stumps that can double as stools or end tables. Bottom right, The bright, clean kitchen, with its quartzite countertops, Sub-Zero refrigerator, and custom cabinetry continues the airy feeling.