/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/dmn/IHGVBGFCQBH6BNV42UHFGEOSDY.jpg)
An adventurous couple with a home on Highland Park’s Beverly Drive approached Philip Thomas Vanderford and his team at Studio Thomas James about a bold renovation. The homeowners came to the right place. Vanderford and his team don’t shy away from color, pattern, scale or texture. No two of Vanderford’s homes are ever the same, whether he’s designing in Paris, the British West Indies, Shanghai or at home in Dallas.
For the Beverly Drive project, the team had their work cut out for them. “The house was probably late ’80s, early ’90s,” Vanderford says. “It was extremely dated — 25-year-old fixtures, that sort of thing — but the bones were really good, very classic.” The studio, which would label the project “The Bold on Beverly,” got to work learning about the lifestyle and specific vision of the homeowners.
“They’re not scared of color. They’re not scared of pattern,” Vanderford notes. “They really wanted to embrace the traditional bones of the house and lean into that in its fullness, because it does have some beautiful moldings and columns. But at the same time, they really wanted it to feel fresh and up to date and be vibrant and feel energetic and different. So we embraced the best of what was old and then layered in some very edgy, fun moments with color or style.”
The homeowners have a spectacular art collection, which they added to over the course of the renovation, including a few commissioned works. “Some of these pieces they’ve had 20 years. I love that about this house. There’s a lot of new, but it feels very layered and very evolved in a way that you can’t always achieve if you run out and do everything in a day,” Vanderford says. “Working with them and using a lot of what they had, maybe presented in a different way, feels more storied. It has more soul to it.”
That’s certainly true in the living room, where Vanderford breathed new life into the classic revival structure of the space. He opted for big, saturated colors and the graphic effect of black and white.
Vanderford worked around the existing piano, artwork and chandelier, then reupholstered a couple of the homeowners’ slipper chairs, had custom tables made in brass — topped with thick pieces of quartz — and brought in unique floor lamps by Kelly Wearstler. “Because there was so much of a classic backdrop, we really decided to be edgy on some of the furniture selections,” he explains.
Even the carefully curated Dowel bar cart fits the design aesthetic with its X-shape in black wood and brass detailing. “We just love the tension of the bar cart off the white paneling,” Philip says, noting he mixed form and function by using a few of the homeowner’s colorful go-to glasses as part of the styling. Beautifully bottled liquor and a Vanity Fair coffee table book on iconic portraiture add interest to the vignette.
Surprisingly, the room wasn’t built around the yellow drapes; they were chosen as a finishing touch after Vanderford had made nearly all the design decisions. “We knew the drapery needed to be something powerful,” he says. “We were exploring that with pattern, but we ended up with such a patterned rug that we decided to throw caution to the wind and go really bold with a saturated color. We let color be the power rather than pattern.”
Around the same time, Vanderford was working on the center stage of the dining room, the mood-boosting palette of Paul Smith’s iconic Swirl hand-knotted Tibetan wool rug. “We were scheming, and we were like, ‘OK, now the yellow completes the story,” he says of the drapes, used in both the living and dining rooms.
As for that rug, it was the piece de resistance of the room. “We ended up landing on this really, really bold moment, but it definitely proved to be the right decision. We loved how that pattern sort of leads you into the space and kind of bounces the eye around,” Vanderford says.
With the swirl pattern of the rug in mind, Vanderford went with a wallpaper with a graphic, geometric shape. “It gave the room a little more edge, a counterbalance to the heavy dentil molding,” he says.
In between the living and dining rooms sits the entryway, which once had flooring and a staircase railing of the era when the house was built. After replacing the original flooring with a marble combination by Dallas’ Ann Sacks, Vanderford says his team designed the new custom railing to feel like something that could have been there all along.
They started with custom rosettes and came up with an original pattern, literally drawing out the design. “It’s sometimes hard to pull off current and classical revival at the same time,” he says. “Even though both the railing and the flooring are in a more traditional pattern, we cleaned it up a bit. So there’s something fresh about the railing, even though it’s quite ornate. It still has an air about it that feels sort of vibrant. It doesn’t feel dusty.”
In the powder bath, the floor is made from a massive, solid piece of marble slab, and the installation required ripping out the adjoining walls. With the baseboards and the moldings made from the same veined marble, Vanderford opted for the textured finish of black leather croc wallpaper by Elitis. “It felt rich but didn’t compete with the strong pattern of the marble,” Vanderford says. Custom-made crystal obelisk sconces finish out the look.
At the back of the house sits the family room, with its beautiful white built-in bookcases, the only remnants of the original area. “We started fresh with these beautiful Christian Liaigre chairs with a really high-polish veneer and the brass bases. Those were done in leather,” Vanderford says. Custom brass cocktail tables, the throw pillows and fuchsia rug tied in with the artwork.
The primary bath includes two pieces of powerfully patterned book-matched slab (in which the veining and movement flow into one another) across the back wall, as well as Ralph Lauren sconces that reminded Vanderford of something you might see in a 1920s train station. The shower walls and the back wall are all slab, as are the countertops. Mosaic tile around the perimeter from Ann Sacks repeats on the shower floor. Bold on Beverly, indeed.
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/dmn/6QQMGGYHVFH3TOWET6GRDBCCSA.jpg)