When Genevieve Webb, half of the creative team behind Feather Hill Interiors—Ashley Mutch is the other half—owned a vacation home in Bethany Beach, the two-story traditional house became an important sales tool as well as a weekend summer haven.
“The house was a great way for us to showcase exactly what our style is,” Webb recalls. “A lot of times when we’re designing for clients, we have to infuse the [space] with their personality, and we love that. The projects have a lot of Feather Hill Interiors in them, but this home shows what we would do without that collaboration.”
With five bedrooms and four bathrooms, the 3,500-square-foot home offered the design partners a big canvas upon which to show their stuff. Decked in mostly pale hues, and monochromatic in many places, the house is nevertheless rich and visually stimulating—to a point. The main word that comes to mind is serenity.
“We were interested in adding depth through texture, as opposed to color or patterns,” Webb explains. “We wanted the home to have a coastal feel without it being coastal-themed.” That meant no clichè nautical moments—and no aqua blues or sea glass. If anything, the house reflects a found driftwood aesthetic, but it’s subtle. “It’s a little bit eclectic, very natural,” Webb notes.
Webb points out that the house was a new build, “[It was] a builder-grade home, so in order to elevate and personalize it, we changed a lot—new tile, new lighting throughout, new fixtures.” The living room’s small glass slider had to go, replaced by charming French doors. The blond engineered floors stayed. What sits atop the flooring was carefully considered: The driftwood-influenced coffee table from RH acts as a tone-setter. The creamy linen sofa set, designed in a slipcover style, was also sourced from RH. Unstructured linen-covered ottomans provide casual seating, while the oatmeal-colored rug, from Serena & Lily, features a bold diamond texture.
The only pieces of furniture that deviate from the uniform paleness are the ruggedly woven armchairs (also from Serena & Lily), which appear to be golden brown when the right light catches them. They were the first pieces that the pair selected for the space. “We wanted the back of the chairs to be eye-catching,” Mutch says. “They’re a focal point, and they bring warmth into the room.” The chairs say, You can be casual—you’re home now.
The living space rambles into the kitchen and dining areas. “The kitchen island had sort of a thin, traditional-style leg, and I felt that a really quick fix to modernize the kitchen would be to pull the legs off and to replace them with larger-scaled, square contemporary legs,” Webb recalls. “They have that gold-cap detail at the foot, which added a really nice touch.” The pair introduced a wood-look custom hood and a backsplash from Bedrosians, replaced the builder-grade lighting with pendants from Visual Comfort, and added a faucet from Newport Brass. The cabinet hardware is from Rejuvenation.
“We wanted the home to have a coastal feel without it being coastal-themed.”
The dining room makes a slightly less casual statement with a Serena & Lily pedestal table beneath a chandelier from the same company. In contrast to the loosely woven living room armchairs, the dining room chairs (also from Serena & Lily) feature a more delicate weave. “We wanted everything to go together in a big open space,” Mutch says, “but we wanted that tiny corner—the dining space—to feel a bit more elevated.”
The team went for a bit of whimsy in the game/hangout room, which is meant to appeal to kids and drop-by guests, with a table tennis set and a quartet of chambray chairs with exposed stitching and ropey accents. “As soon as we saw them, they were a must-have,” Webb says.
A trio of polished wood surfboards, custom-made by Tiki Soul Surfboards, adorns the board-and-batten walls, lest anyone miss that the space—and the home—was intended for summer fun.
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