Seasons: Summer Breeze

Summer Breeze

Easy-living décor and the beckoning outdoors inspire sweet dreams in a country home’s master bedroom

TEXT BY MEGAN SWOYER

PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN GRUEN

STYLING BY KARIN LIDBECK

home’s wonderful spaces, thanks to lovely appointments. French doors lead out to a terrace, a quintessential East Coast stone wall, and the pool and pool A second marriage and merging families meant Karen Davis’ clients needed a place where many people could gather comfortably at once. Davis, house beyond. “This room represents summertime’s carefree living, with doors and windows open, sunshine, fresh air, and living indoors and out,” Davis says. How can you bottle that summer breeze feel and enjoy it year-round? Mix together dollops of rich blues and crisp whites that, when paired, seem to sing a suma longtime judge for this magazine’s annual mer tune evocative of the bluebird’s song. Add a jute rug and you get an instant Detroit Design Awards competition and owner of easy-living ambience. Connecticut-based Davis Raines Design, “The homeowners love navy blue, so we selected fabric, bedding, BLISSFUL was the interior designer for the job. BLUES artwork, and more to highlight blues and also to complement the “The home is in Connecticut’s Litchfield Summertime and warm cream color,” Davis says of the bedroom’s palette. County and is a weekend/country home,” the livin’ is easy in The settee’s Robert Allen Ikat pattern (Sedona, embroidery in Insays Davis, who has been in the design this master bed- digo), which is also used as the drapery’s border, mingles perfectly industry for nearly 30 years. “My clients room overlooking pastoral scenery. with Duralee’s Sapphire silk-velvet covered pillows. Also joining in live full-time in New York City and spend on the blues: Christopher Spitzmiller’s custom-fired ceramic lamps. a lot of their summer here.” These days, Davis’ second-home portfolio is growing quickly, due

The ground-level master bedroom is quite pos- in part to COVID-19. “Because of the pandemic, a lot of people are buying sibly the most relaxing and comfortable of all the second homes,” she explains. “That’s a big part of my clientele right now.”