Inside 6 Homes That Prove Traditional Interior Design and Modern Style Really Do Go Together

While the popularity of modern styles show no signs of letting up, there’s no need to choose between spartan contemporary interiors and the cozy upholstered look of traditional interior design. The emphasis on heirloom pieces, floral prints, and striking chandeliers—all hallmarks of traditional decor—is undeniably comforting, perhaps in part because the layered aesthetic is so often a far cry from the minimalism of modern interiors. But there’s no need to choose between one or the other. In recent years, decorators the world over have proved how satisfying a space can be when it mixes the best elements of traditional design with the lessons of styles that have come around since. Below, we share six homes that perfectly marry traditional interior design with modern sensibilities. 

A Splash of Sottsass in a Historic Austin Home

It can be said that a historic house is only as good as its bones, but oftentimes, it takes a little digging to find them. Such was the case for Carrie and Robert Hicks, who found their dream home in the form of a Tudor-inspired house built in 1926 in one of Austin’s oldest neighborhoods.

“We first fell in love with the location and the great big front yard. It was just a really wonderful space,” recalls Carrie, an interior designer who cut her teeth in New York and West Hollywood before settling down in Texas. The house had been through many hands in the nearly hundred years before the couple, who have three young children, took possession in 2015. Layers upon layers of misguided renovations had taken their toll. “The bones were there, and the structure was there, so the idea was to bring in Paul to save the historic 1926 house,” she continues, referring to architect Paul Lamb, who was in charge of the remodel.

Despite the decades of successive remodels, they were determined to preserve the home’s original charm and also channel a modern feel. “What really caught my attention was that they liked the feel of this Tudor house, but Carrie’s favorite architect is Mies van der Rohe,” Lamb explains of conversations they had in the early stages of the design process. His solution was to preserve the existing structure and build a Mies van der Rohe–inspired addition. They decided on a minimal steel and glass volume that sits atop brick columns and protrudes from the back façade. “I love that kind of challenge,” Lamb says, “trying to make opposites talk to each other.” —Laura May Todd

A Fresh Take on a 19th-Century Abode

“We’ll just fix it up a little bit.” That’s what Ashley Stark Kenner thought when she and husband Nick, founder and CEO of Just Salad, bought a town house on New York’s Upper East Side to make room for their growing family. The landmarked 19th-century building had a lot going for it—generous dimensions, a deep backyard, and, a rarity among town houses, lots of light. But at their first meeting with New York–based Lichten Architects, talk quickly shifted to “gut renovation.”

“The façade was the only thing that stayed,” Kenner says now, three years later. “For a while, we didn’t have a roof. We didn’t have a floor. We dug out the basement, we added a top floor, we added terraces. If I showed you the before and after, you’d be like, ‘What?’”

As the senior vice president of design and creative director at the eight-decades-old textile titan Stark, she knew exactly what she wanted. And with a totally clean slate, she didn’t have to compromise. “I had a vision, and I stuck with it,” says Kenner, calling her aesthetic “laid-back, organic, beachy, a little bit French.”

Working closely with Kenner, architects Andrew Friedman and Kevin Lichten created a floor plan that functioned for family life and, as Friedman explains, “felt loftlike and modern but still like a traditional town house.” That sensibility extended to the decor, spearheaded by New York firm Aman & Meeks (with a heavy hand from Kenner herself). —Hannah Martin

California Breeziness on Park Avenue

When two born-and-bred West Coasters relocated to New York, their goal was to bring the sunny atmosphere of a life lived close to the Pacific along with them. To stave off homesickness and stay true to their roots, they turned to New York–based designer Young Huh to inject breezy California vibes into one of the most unlikely of places: a high-rise towering over one of Manhattan’s most prized locales—Central Park. “Since the clients were relocating, they asked that I keep the design very light, bright, and airy,” Huh says of the couple, who moved in order to accommodate the husband’s job in finance.” The end result? A handsome Park Avenue pad that perfectly blends California spirit with a dose of New York drama.

“They wanted there to be very formal areas because they do a lot of entertaining, but they wanted to keep the bright and cheerful elements of their previous home,” Huh continues. To balance these two seemingly disparate design edicts, Huh stuck to a warm palette of peaches, creams, and shades of rose while introducing traditional elements such as wainscoting and crown molding, which were installed in the grand entranceway. Indeed, the new-build apartment’s clean lines allowed Huh carte blanche to build up the style the couple envisioned. “It’s in a very modern high-rise, so we had to work to bring some architectural interest,” she adds. —Laura May Todd

A Healthy Dose of Color in Charleston

The Charleston apartment of designer Matthew Bees reflects his love of formal interiors. But in his desire to make a room a “menagerie of furniture and art,” he employs bold colors, a variety of textures, and impetuous decor choices that are apt to catch visitors off guard. A zebra rug on the living room floor is one notable example. The flamboyant Louis Philippe bed crown in the primary bedroom is another, as is a statue of the Greek god Narcissus, which reminded him of his father. “Before he took a plunge, [Narcissus] was a hunter,” Bees says. “My father was an avid sportsman, and rather handsome. Every time I see an image of Narcissus with his deer cloak I can’t help but think of [him].”

Bees lives in an old shopkeeper’s apartment above a store on historic King Street, where he sourced some of the handsome mahogany pieces and antiques that grace his seven rooms. He chose the Southern city as the headquarters for his design business as well because, as he says, “I reached a point, around my 27th birthday, where I realized I needed to leave Alabama and learn. But I didn’t want to take the usual tack and move to New York. Charleston offered me the continued education I was yearning for, but kept me in the South.”

He describes his aesthetic as “meaningful and layered.” A serious collection of English antiques—from the chest of drawers in the bedroom to the secretary in the living room—illustrates that point. But Bees likes to play with extremes too. Dark spaces, such as the foyer, open onto airy areas like the living room, which has three windows that allow the sunlight to make every color pop. In particular, Bees loves the color green. It’s in the saturated Philip Jeffries grasscloth in the primary bedroom and the bed linens. “I’m a nature boy,” the decorator says. “Green just feels good to me.” Also of note is the use of sunshine hues seen in both the kitchen and on the living room sofa. “I’m a Gemini and apparently we love yellows,” Bees says. —Robert Rorke

A New Jersey Home in Search of “Sparkle”

The first question interior designer Fawn Galli asked the owners of this updated colonial home located in Summit, New Jersey, was: “On a scale from one to 10, how groovy are you?” Both clients answered with a 7.5. Nonetheless, Galli needed more than just one simple metric in order to understand the overall aesthetic direction of this lively family of five. Soon enough, she had her clients and their children make a Pinterest board to help zero in on their collective tastes. She also took careful note of their clothing styles and interpersonal dynamics.

Despite this careful attention to detail, the entire design process was, as Galli puts it, intuitive. “I’m [uninterested in] rubber stamping my voice onto hundreds of interiors,” she says. Instead, Galli hopes to push clients to inhabit a dream home that they never even knew they wanted. In other words: “I [want to] help clients find their design voice.”

In the case of this specific design project, that meant creating a home office suffused with musical instruments and one swing chair–appointed bedroom. It also meant more standard additions to the dwelling, such as media and exercise rooms, and a collection of carefully picked art. 

“I love when things have a weird sparkle,” Galli reflects. In the case of this home, her guiding ethos was to “jazz up the traditional” in a style that she refers to as “funky traditional.” The exterior of the house, with its all-white façade, is admittedly charming—but it belies Galli’s more layered interior compositions. Inside, an eclectic blend of vintage and modern elements can be seen, while colorful prints and textures are sprinkled throughout.—Christiane Lemieux

A London Mews Home That’s Funky, But Still Formal

What makes projects special are the people living in them—but Tish and Tom are on a whole other level.” So says Rachel Chudley, a British interior decorator known for funky-chic rooms that are full of surprises. The name-checked clients would be blue-blooded Londoners Tish Weinstock, a Vogue writer and beauty editor, and Tom Guinness, a model turned soulful fashion stylist. “Both have style with an edge,” Chudley continues, adding that the finished product, a house for the couple and their toddler son, Reuben, “walks the line between old and new and bad taste and good taste.”

Before taste of any kind could be explored, there had to be a property to decorate, and the couple were keen on moving to one of London’s highly coveted mews. “They are quite idyllic, don’t have traffic—the streets dead-end—and are usually in pretty nice areas, because the buildings were the coach houses at the back of big town houses,” Guinness explains. The one that he and Weinstock, child-free at the time, settled on in Holland Park possessed a bland prefab appearance, though, suggestive of a decades-old rebuild or renovation. Still, it did have a rear garden, an unusual feature in most mews. Architect Milan Nedelkovic of local firm Helm (with sage input from Weinstock’s stepfather, Jonathan Sykes, a property developer) stepped in to reimagine the house along more conventional lines, facing it with honey-colored brick, topping it with a mansard roof, and excavating a basement that now houses a multipurpose living room. “It actually looks closer to what it could have been,” Weinstock says, “but from the outside it’s quite deceptive.” —Mitchell Owens