ROBIN WILSON

“A little color goes a long way,” says Brooke Shields, pictured in her living room. She covered floral chintz chairs inherited from her mother in hot pink with white trim. For a calm, happy backdrop, she painted the entire first floor buttery yellow. “It’s supposed to be good for growing children’s minds,” says the mom of two girls: Rowan, 12, and Grier, 9.

The original supermodel, who also happens to be an actress, author, wife, and mother, Brooke Shields turns heads with the colorful, comfy family home she decorated 100 percent herself.

ome people count sheep to fall asleep. Brooke Shields decorates rooms in her head. “It’s completely relaxing,” she says. Brooke, who has been a spokesperson for La-Z-Boy for the past fi ve years, calls interior design her secret passion, unearthing the perfect tag sale fi nd her hidden talent. She credits her late mother for passing on the decorating gene, along with a warehouse of furniture.

With so many pieces at her fi ngertips, it should have been easy to decorate the classic Long Island cottage she and her husband bought two years ago, but it wasn’t. “My mother’s pieces had a pearls-and-twinset vibe,” Brooke says. “But I wanted white sofas and Lucite tables! I wanted photographs on the walls! I wanted whitewashed fl oors!” Lying awake one night, she had an epiphany: “I sat bolt upright and decided I could use some of my mother’s pieces and still get the look. They just needed tweaks.”

For inspiration Brooke got out the “dream house” fi le she had been keeping for years. “Every single room I loved was neutral with pops of saturated color,” she says. Why not re-cover her mom’s cabbage rose chintz chairs in hot pink? Why not use her silver teapot lamp on the bedroom dresser? So she did, and those late-night schemes of a comfortable, colorful house where no room is off limits started coming to life.

HIGHER UP An electrified lantern hangs from the pergola, giving the patio the feel of a room.

Brooke and her husband, Chris Henchy, fell hard for the classic proportions of the 1920s cottage, opposite. “I love it when we are all on the front porch and friends ride their bikes over with a bottle of wine,” she says. When Brooke entertains on the patio, the menu invariably includes tomatoes and herbs she grows in the backyard, plus her specialty cocktail. “I make a super refreshing cucumber vodka with muddled lime and agave,” she says.