Room We Love: A Wine Lounge in Lake Wylie
Tamara Leicester fashions a vibrant space for a girls getaway at home
Room by room, designer Tamara Leicester made over the bland interior of her client’s 3,600-square-foot Lake Wylie home. On the main floor, the homeowner wanted a colorful space to house her extensive wine collection and entertain friends. “We’d already done the grand living room, so she wanted this space to be cozier and have a moodier, more glamorous vibe,” Leicester says. “We drenched the vaulted space in deep teal and accented the trim in navy blue. There was a moment where we both thought, Are we really going to go for it? But taking that risk paid off.”
USE WHAT YOU’VE GOT
The first time Leicester surveyed the white, unfurnished room, she knew she wanted to accentuate the ceiling beams and trim work. She chose Sherwin-Williams’ Grand Canal for the walls and Naval for the trim, then anchored the space with antelope-patterned carpet tiles from Flor. “With that vaulted room and its high ceilings, bringing a pattern in on the floor helped ground the room,” she says. “You can pick up the individual tiles to clean or replace as needed. I use those all the time for people who have kids and pets.”
Courtesy Joe Purvis
LAYER THE COLOR
Leicester works “big to small,” so she started with a midnight-blue velvet sofa and eggplant-colored chairs from Caracole. The wood credenza from Wine Enthusiast has two wine refrigerators inside to hold special bottles the homeowner collects on her travels. The gold coffee table, also from Caracole, rotates at the base “so she could do wine tastings and turn the table,” Leicester says. Above the sofa, she hung a painting of a vineyard to remind the homeowner of her trips to Napa.
DRESS IT UP
To complement the jewel-toned velvets, Leicester added accent pieces like a pair of mauve ottomans from EQ3 and a mix of pillows from Anthropologie. The throw came from Surya and smaller accessories like the candlesticks, lamps, and vases from AMARA. “I looked for things that fit this glamorous, chic vibe,” she says. “For a space with this many deep, dark colors, bringing in that element of shine with metallics keeps it bright.”