Anything goes at Oklahoma Designer Show House
ARCADIA — The first rule of the Oklahoma Designer Show House: There are no rules for the Oklahoma Designer Show House.
“We want to give designers a chance to express themselves artistically,” said organizer Andrea Meister, owner of Roost Oklahoma, “because that’s what they really are, artists.”
In its third year, the show house gives designers a chance to work unfettered by client expectations or the rules that often govern other show homes. The home at 13300 Hickory Hills Road at Arcadia makes for a huge canvas: 6,998 square feet, six living rooms, four bedrooms, four baths and a theater room.
It will be open from noon to 7 p.m. through Sept. 17. Tickets are $10 at www. oklahomadesignershowhouse.com and at
Designers Market, 11900 N Santa Fe in Oklahoma City. Tickets will be $15 at the door.
To get there, take Second Street/State Highway 66 in Edmond east of Interstate 35; go north on Hiwassee Road to Hickory Hills Road to the 40-acre spread. J.W. Armstrong built the trilevel home in 2008.
Proceeds from the tour go to Free to Live Animal Sanctuary of Edmond, a nonprofit no-kill animal sanctuary. Vendors will be on site throughout the tour, and the house and all of its contents will be for sale.
The property is listed for $2,195,000 with Wyatt Poindexter, of Keller Williams Realty Elite, 5629 N Classen Blvd. It also features a swimming pool, fountain, stocked pond and a geothermal heating and cooling system.
The idea is to showcase local designers, said Lauren Bernhard, a designer for Roost Oklahoma.
“I tell people I’m the least local thing about it with my 817 area code,” she said, referring to her cellphone number. “But everything else is pure Okie. I love it.”
The result is a house running a gamut of styles.
Interior Gilt’s entryway is an eclectic blend with black woodwork, sleek furnishings and graffiti- and musicinspired artwork.
“See those curtains?” Bernhard said, pointing out the floor-length curtains covered in colorful figures. Interior Gilt designer Jimmy Rupp was inspired by graffiti, she said. “He had that fabric custom-printed, and he made that crazy beautiful thing with that image.”
In the master bath, Crystal Carte and Carte’s Interiors worked with the dark wood cabinets already in place to create a more rustic feel, deploying an earthy palette and wildlife-inspired decor.
The mood grows more whimsical in the playroom, where Whiteside Interiors dispersed green and pink highlights in the decor and hung a swing chair in front of the window.
Green and pink get a more bold treatment in the upstairs office, where Carissa Stevens/Scout Studios have papered the walls in a bold palm leaf pattern and uses a neon sign to make things clear: GIRLBOSS.
Downstairs in Roost Oklahoma’s theater room, the mood is pure fantasy, driven by the animal-shaped sconces lining the wall and the colorful velvet sectionals standing in for the usual recliner-and-cup-holder theater chairs.
The real theme, Meister joked, smoothing the velvet on one lounger, “is Not A Man Cave.”
But the rooms all tie together somehow. “We’ve done this for three years, and it always flows somehow,” Bernhard said. “We don’t discuss it or plan it; it just flows.”
The rooms are dispersed first come, first served, and Bernhard said organizers would love to include more designers.
“We want this to be a community,” she said. “We want to set up a positive environment for the designers. We stay here late at night and hang out with each other, get to know each other better. It’s kind of like summer camp when we’re all here together working on the house together. We kind of feed off each other, we borrow tools from each other, because we all provide a different skill set.”
For designers who often have to channel their creativity through a client’s filter, the show house offers a rare opportunity to unleash their creativity.
“Artists are inspired constantly,” Bernhard said. “This is a way for designers to get that out of their head and into reality and share that with the world.”
Among the designers taking part at the show house are board members, a group known as The Five Tribes: Jimmy Rupp, of Interior Gilt; Travis Neely, of Neely Design; Andrea Meister, of Roost Oklahoma; Phara Queen, of Phara Queen Design; and Ashley Whiteside, of Whiteside Art and Interiors.
Other participating designers are Carissa Stevens, of Scout Studios; Gia Rose, of Designers Market; Carly Purdy, of Roost Oklahoma; Anne McCarthy, of Emory Anne’s; Mark Taylor, of Traditions; Mariann Pope, of Interior Gilt; Maryam Hamilton, of Interior Gilt; Crystal Carte, of Carte’s Interiors; Katie Parrack, of Live Vibrantly by Design; DeLisa Oakes, of DeLisa Oakes Design; and Jenna Hinckley, a design student at the University of Central Oklahoma and intern at Interior Gilt.