disCOVER

EVERYDAY LUXURY

New Jersey-based interior designer Yelena Gerts is all about creating luxurious spaces for her clients’ everyday spaces. When asked to design this grand living room for her client, a family of four in Colts Neck, New Jersey, which is featured on the cover of this month’s Window Fashion VISION magazine, she jumped at the chance. The client gave her a clean slate for their 10,000-squarefoot-house—a designer’s dream. The house was a “beautiful canvas with an open concept, large windows and the perfect layout,” she said. The goal was to create a house that was elegant, luxurious and timeless, yet functional and practical.

“They wanted a very light, open, spacious, luxurious space,” Gerts said. She said the client wanted to have that feel of being in a luxurious hotel lobby, not a typical room that everyone has.

The house features a two-story foyer that is divided into three zones for style and function. The grand living room features large floor-to-ceiling windows that are dressed in super-lightweight wool drapes to create a sense of luxury you can see from each point of the house.

“The wow factor is those Dedar drapes,” Gerts said. “It’s like a cashmere scarf hanging down from the ceiling.” She described entering that room as a “breathtaking moment.”

The windows and the drapery are huge. “That really made this room,” she said. “The windows are really the soul of this room.”

The gray area rug’s subtle abstract pattern became “the neutral foundation for the whole space,” she said. There is a mix of different textures in the room. The main seating is an extra-long sofa upholstered in high-performance white linen, which was custom made and sized to fit the room. There are mirrored surfaces that keep the space soft and airy, Gerts said, as well as contemporary art pieces. The other spaces in the house all have a similar palette, but each have their own voice, V