Cabin Comfort

This lakeside cabin in Ontario, Canada, pairs the best of lakeside living with farmhouse style.

Stunning views of clear Lake Muskoka and the lush forest in Ontario, Canada, might make you think there’s less work to be done on the interior of a lakeside home. But that’s not the case. Designer Sascha Lafleur of West of Main took it as a challenge to create something as special inside as the landscape is outside. Sascha has plenty of experience in strategically approaching what patterns, textures and materials she’ll use to foster the harmony between a stylish and a comfortable, livable interior. “You can have this beautiful build with all the finishes, but until you finish it with furniture and décor, it doesn’t feel like a home,” she says.

ARCHITECTURAL DETAILS

Sascha and her team worked in collaboration with Muskoka Lumber, the architectural design company responsible for the home’s noteworthy architecture. Some of the features include high-vaulted ceilings, an open floor plan and a modern sunroom.

"You can have this beautiful build with all the finishes, but until you finish it with furniture

and décor, it doesn’t feel like a home.”

Sascha used the cabin’s clean lines and rustic materials when deciding how to style the spaces. For example, the vintage-inspired rug in the middle of the dining area plays off the texture of exposed brick in the kitchen, alongside the rich wood details on the ceiling. “There’s the richness of the terra-cotta tone in the brick and cedar, so we brought in the dining room rug to ground the space,” she says. And of course, there’s the rest of the décor and furniture to take into account. “Dining rooms are full of hard surfaces, like the live-edge table with metal legs. If the rug wasn’t there, it would float and it wouldn’t feel as cozy.”

(above) Muskoka Lumber is behind the home’s striking architecture, like the floor-to-ceiling windows, modern iron details and reclaimed wood. (opposite) Sascha pulled from the tones of the home’s organic materials when choosing fabrics and décor. She says: “You can mix in ebony, and it gives you a wood tone in texture, but it doesn’t introduce another color of wood. It complements it nicely in a neutral way.”

(opposite) The dining room rug has an antique look, but without any of the fuss. It’s new but made to look worn. “The rug is polyester and it has no pile, so you can easily clean it as you clean the rest of your floors,” Sascha says.

The sunroom acts as an additional living room. “We set it up as a living space because you can go out on the deck and eat outside, open up all the doors to the sunroom and have the space feel like one,” Sascha says. She worked with the room’s floor-to-ceiling glass walls and added a console table with vintage pottery so the view from the staircase would be more interesting than the back of a sofa.