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They say that everything is bigger in Texas. But is it also prettier? That’s what the inaugural Kips Bay Decorator Show House in Dallas, which opens today to the public, would seem to imply. With AD100 designer Jan Showers as a co-chair, and the likes of The Shade Store, Kohler, Cambria, Benjamin Moore, Arteriors, The Rug Company, and The Ritz Carlton Dallas as sponsors, the house is a particularly beautiful success.
“The idea is you come into the forest,” Lauren Rottet of Rottet Studio told AD during a virtual tour of the house this week. She was speaking of her design for the home’s entry hall—which features lovely Trove wallpaper and strikingly bold magnolia carpets from Kyle Bunting—but she might as well have been speaking of the color story of many of the rooms. From the minty study worthy of Jackie Kennedy and designed by Showers to a tucked-away bar area by Sees Design and a family room by mother-son duo Viviano Viviano, the verdant tone seemed to sprout up just about everywhere. It was prominent in the artworks used by Trish Sheats Interior Design to create the bedroom for the imaginary owner’s son, and in an “Emerald Garden” back staircase by M Interiors.
That creatively repurposed area did double duty on the trend watch, thanks to its use of Gracie wallpaper. Floral wall coverings, and in particular, those with chinoiserie patterns or otherwise feminine blooms, also came to life behind many an interior door. Dina Bandman Interiors used a canary yellow paper designed in part by fashion designer Erdem Moralioglu to make her petite bedroom shine, while Traci Zeller Interiors employed a blue varietal to make for a space in which women waiting for the restroom could sit and chat. The expansive primary bathroom, which revolves around a rotunda shape and includes two branching-off closets, was another example, thanks to treelike and iris designs by de Gournay that Doniphan Moore Interiors installed.
Another impossible-to-ignore synergy were the rooms created by Mark D. Sikes and Michelle Nussbaumer. “It smells good and sounds good,” Nussbaumer assured her virtual visitors, noting that Turkish music was playing in her room IRL. Featuring global inspirations and fabrics and trims from Clarence House, her blue-and-white room shone bright. The tiled look of its walls was not unlike that of Mark D. Sikes’s living room, which the decorator dubbed “Casa Fiorentina” in honor of the historic interior often associated with Billy Baldwin, David Hicks, Hubert de Givenchy, and Bunny Mellon. Its Iksel custom wallpaper, Guinevere dhurrie rug, and sky blue couches upholstered with Schumacher fabric made it not only classic Sikes but also perhaps one of his most striking rooms yet. Undoubtedly, it is poised to be a breakout Instagram star from inside the sprawling showcase.
Other design talents were also impossible to ignore thanks to the strength of their creations. Studio Thomas James tiled an upstairs bathroom not far from the dark yet glowing second living room fashioned by Ten Plus Three. Last, but certainly not least, a work by Letitia Huckaby and installed by Liliana Bloch Gallery made for one of the most quietly powerful moments of the entire house. Titled Sister Rebecca, the work is part of a series that focuses on the nuns at the Sisters of the Holy Family Motherhouse in New Orleans—an all-Black congregation founded in 1842.
Take a look at all of the house’s striking spaces below.
