Maven of modern showcases neutrals that wow
There’s a screened porch with artful lighting fixtures hanging from the ceiling and six midcentury-modern chairs nestled around a big table in Laura Bohn’s country home in Pennsylvania. Potted plants make the space as outdoorsy as what’s beyond the big screen windows and slatted walls.
But what she’s excited about right now are its floors. They’re porcelain tile that looks like wood, and the native Houstonian who’s been an interior designer for nearly 40 years is embracing what’s new right now. “I’m not such a trends person, but I appreciate all the new materials. I do a lot of research. I love Pinterest and look at every periodical — anything for new materials,” said Bohn, who has lived in New York for years. “You can buy gorgeous things at Home Depot for almost no money. The porcelain tiles that look like wood are incredible.”
Bohn, whose new book, “Laura Bohn: Ways of Seeing,” was recently published, will be in Houston on Tuesday for continuing education courses at the Houston Design Center and a book signing at River Oaks Bookstore.
Her father, Dale Cooper, was an engineer, and among his many projects was heading up work on the heating, cooling and electrical systems for the Astrodome. Her mother, Jean Cooper, had been a fashion illustrator at what is now the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, Calif.
From them she learned to read architectural and engineering plans as well as work up interior design for homes, real or imagined.
She laughs as she talks about the modern way her mother decorated their Memorial Park home compared to their very traditional neighbors.
“Our house was different from everybody else’s, and it took me a long time to realize how it affected me. We had commercialgrade carpet and a hotpink sofa. It was pretty funny,” she said. “We had pine cabinets in the den with chartreuse paint on them. There were things that crept into my head that I didn’t acknowledge until a lot later, and they came from Houston.”
Bohn doesn’t recall what she studied at the University of Texas, but she’ll tell you straight up that she flunked out.
“I made all ‘D’s’ and one ‘F’. Whatever it was I studied, I wasn’t very interested in it,” she said.
She was tall and rail thin, so at 19 — it was 1959 — she left Houston for New York and worked as a house model for Seventh Avenue clothing manufacturers. From there she moved to Paris, where she modeled exquisite couture by Nina Ricci.
Her modeling career lasted more than a decade, and she returned to New York and made new friends. They were all professional women, and one day they leveled with her.
“I was still running around on the runway … doing five or six shows a day and running around with a pack of shoes. Someone said, ‘You really need to go back to school and get on with your life. Get it together,’ ” she recalled.
She’d always loved drawing home plans — which her mother had always critiqued — so when she was 32 years old, she enrolled at the Pratt Institute’s School of Design.
“I saw a presentation of environmental design and went, ‘Oh, my God, this is it, it’s what I want to do.’ I was completely hooked and still am. It was really because (my friends) confronted me, and I became a straight-A student,” she said.
She was influenced by Joseph D’Urso, a teacher at Pratt and the originator of minimalism. Out of college, though, she was hired by John Saladino — D’Urso’s opposite — and she found herself in a world steeped in over-thetop luxury.
It was there that she met designer Joseph Lembo, and the two of them headed off on their own, getting residential and commercial projects all over the world. They created sets for “The Year of the Dragon” movie and converted gritty industrial spaces in New York into residential lofts.
In 1996, she founded Laura Bohn Design Associates and settled into her own aesthetic: simple interiors, modern yet classic style and plenty of light gray and pale neutrals.
Her book documents some of her best.
There’s the 1907 BeauxArts bank building in New York’s Meatpacking District that she and her current husband, Richard Fiore, bought and converted into condos. For a while, they lived in its penthouse, with terrazzo tile floors and a fireplace framed in laser-cut steel. Its kitchen is a mix of stainless steel and ribbed wood, and natural light pours in through giant windows all around.
In a seven-bedroom two-story in the Hamptons, Bohn played with color; dark walnut floors are brightened with palegray walls and a white ceiling in a satin finish to reflect light. Its kitchen is a soft combination of Carrara marble, pale-gray walls and putty-colored cabinets for a more soothing look.
Tackling a big home on Mercer Island in the Seattle area, Bohn ripped out walls to create more open spaces and kept the family’s warehouse full of antiques from feeling too stuffy by adding in clean-lined, contemporary furniture.
And she filled a home in Colorado’s Elk Mountains with comfortable furniture in a range of textures — mohair, velvet, tweed — and sculptural lighting. Since the home was in a beautiful setting and designed by a skilled architect, Bohn wanted her choices to play off its already natural and luxurious materials.
Gray is a constant theme in her work, now and early in her career. It’s her go-to color — right now she loves SherwinWilliams Repose Gray, Aloof Gray and Dorian Gray — for its ability to be invisible.
“It’s also a color no one remembers. You don’t remember the gray walls, but you remember everything else that’s in the room,” she said. “I like the color to disappear except when I make it really appear and I’m in control of it.”
Bohn said she gets restless every decade or so and needs to move. “I always say, ‘When it’s time to paint, it’s time to move.’ If you’re going to paint, why not just get a new apartment?” she asked. She’s antsy now.
She and her husband of 34 years are selling their New York home and are preparing for a new phase: life in a 19th-century chateau in France’s Loire Valley.
“I have one picked out, and we’ll see it at Christmas. It’s big. Nobody wants these houses, that’s the interesting part,” she said, noting that she was drawn to its layout and huge windows. “My husband and I do everything together. We work together and build together.”