Neutrals yield sleek results in Uptown
When Diana and Ed Hertel built their home in the heart of Uptown, they knew how they wanted it to feel: refined and contemporary.
The couple selected gray paint for the walls and found a neutral rug for the living room. Then they got stuck.
“I had been trying some things, but they just weren’t working out,” Diana Hertel says. She searched for a sofa, but nothing seemed to look right, and their brand-new home was starting to feel terribly empty.
The Hertels brought in Houston designer Marie Flanigan, who helped them create the crisp look they desired.
“She wanted tailored,
masculine, sleek,” Flanigan says, and “modern but not too cold.”
The four-bedroom patio home has 4,200 square feet spread out over three floors. The front of the house features both a circular staircase and an elevator, and a small patch of outdoor space stretches along the back.
The couple’s previous home, a townhouse in the same area, was more traditional with a different color palette. “The wall color was more of a golden beige,” Diana says. “Everything started to look yellow to me.”
The Hertels selected a warm shade of gray for walls throughout their new place because it’s calming and consistent, which Diana prefers.
“I like simplicity,” she says. “To me, having continuity is more relaxing than a blue room and a red room and a yellow room.”
The living-room rug — a silk and wool Madison Lily piece — inspired the rest of the décor. Two identical custom sofas and a couple of cappuccino-colored Odense chairs form a conversation area that complements the rug. Across the room, the open kitchen is clean and simple with a quartz-topped island and three forged-metal John Lyle bar stools in the same neutral tones.
The subdued palette makes way for what Diana calls her husband’s “pride and joy”: A 400-bottle collection of Scotch whisky.
For about a decade, Ed, an energy executive, has been collecting Scotch from Islay, an island off Scotland’s west coast that boasts eight distilleries. A few years ago, he spent a week in Scotland to attend a “whisky school,” and last year the couple traveled to Islay and stayed on the property of his favorite distillery. “He was in heaven,” Diana says.
Where the builder’s plans called for a wine storage wall in the dining room, the couple decided to create a showcase for Scotch, with about 225 bottles displayed in 18 glass compartments illuminated from within. (The rest still are in storage.)
“We really wanted that to be the shining star,” Flanigan says, and the rest of the room’s details — leather-covered dining chairs, an abstract painting by Carol Benson-Cobb — give it a more masculine, elegant look. So does the brick floor, which stretches across the home’s first level in a herringbone pattern.
That floor is “one of my favorite touches,” Flanigan says. “It’s so unique, so textural. With such a muted palette, it really brought a warmth to the space without needing to add a pop of color.”
The soothing tones continue upstairs, in the master bedroom and a third-floor game room that opens to a covered terrace.
“In the master suite, we wanted form to meet function,” Flanigan said. That meant “sleek bedding, very simple and minimalistic, not a lot of pillows everywhere.” The few carefully chosen accessories don’t distract from the uncluttered aesthetic. And the Hertels have found they feel at home surrounded by shades of gray, brown and cream. “Even though it’s all neutrals, it doesn’t feel cold,” Diana says.
Flanigan loves working with color — but a space filled with neutrals, she says, gives the eye a chance to take in the beauty of luxurious fabrics and textures.
“There’s something that sort of speaks to the soul when you keep to natural tones,” Flanigan says. “There’s a depth and a layering, almost a soulful feel.”