Ep. 421: Relaxed Elegance with Brittany Bromley

0:01Welcome to How to Decorate from Ballard Designs, a weekly podcast all about the trials and triumphs of decorating and redecorating your home. I'm Caroline. I'm on the marketing team. And I'm Taryn, and I'm a product designer. I'm Liz. I head up the creative team. We're your hosts. Join the expert team at Ballard Designs for tips, tricks, and tales from interior designers, stylists, and other talents in the design world. Plus, we'll answer your decorating dilemmas at the end of each episode. We love answering your questions, so don't forget to email us at podcast at ballardesigns.net. Now on with the show.

0:34This episode is brought to you by ChatGPT. Hey, it's Bill Simmons from the Bill Simmons Podcast. Have you guys heard about ChatGPT work? It's the new way to use ChatGPT for bigger multi-step projects. And when you need more than just answers, give ChatGPT work access to your apps and files and it can create real work documents like spreadsheets, slides, and structured reports. Get started at chatgpt.com by selecting work mode available on Plus and Pro plans. Welcome back to the show. I'm Caroline and I'm here with Liz. Hi. And we have a very special guest, New York-based designer and author, Brittany Bromley.

1:15She's known for her traditional take on interiors with layers of pattern and unique details. Her spaces are warm, luxuriously detailed, and brimming with timeless patterns and antiques. Her work has been featured in publications like El Decor, Traditional Home, Veranda, and House Beautiful. And this spring, she released her first book, Relaxed Elegance, from Rizzoli. Brittany, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Caroline. Are you available to come on the road with me? I love that introduction. Absolutely. You know what? I would love the airplane points. no i just was delighted to get your book um obviously the cover is so pretty it's you know very blue and white my favorite part was you opened with your own home which you say 15 different contractors told you to run from and of course you didn't so i well i love and the reason i loved it is just because um i often find that designers own houses give us such a peek into what really interests them and their personalities.

2:17And so I love that that was sort of the opening kind of glimpse. And then it really flowed into all of your client projects. So maybe you can just start with your house. What drew you to it? What was your vision? And we can go from there. Well, apparently what drew me to it is that I'm stubborn because to have so many different professionals tell me that I should think otherwise and then to do it anyway must mean that I have like an innate prove you wrong sort of gene. But what I really loved about it to me is that it felt like it had bones that were traditional and historic and therefore to me felt very relevant.

2:59And so even though it was suffering from, we sort of term a case of benign neglect, I could see underneath it that there was so much there and so much beauty and it really felt like a challenge and an exciting one at that. What were some of the things that you were being told, like reasons to not get this house? Because it's a stunning home. You've really turned it into something amazing. Thank you. I mean, there were entire rooms that hadn't had heating in several years. So sort of the idea that they were living in a very small portion of the home and therefore for what had been neglected had been really neglected as it relates to being either exposed to the elements or I remember once a contractor after looking at the roof told me that he had seen a lot less layers in the subway sandwich.

3:54So there were all sorts of things about it that would make a more cautious home buyer beware. But we were sort of just entranced by it and and loved the challenge of bringing back some of that historic beauty. To say that you've customized every room of this house is an understatement. And for our listeners who haven't seen the book yet, there's just so many, and I said luxurious details in the introduction because that truly is what it is, and just very intricate, tiny little details that maybe on their own could be easy to not notice. But when all brought together, it just creates this really, really special, special, like every room.

4:43And I mean, I think we have to start with the dining room, right? Because of all the sculptural paper mache. So maybe kind of talk to us about your vision and how you just started layering all of the elements together. Well, first of all, I would say to your point, it's probably very much an occupational hazard for a designer to spend any appreciable amount of time in a space and not to constantly be conceptualizing how you could add on to it or change it or make it better. So that's definitely something that comes from spending a lot of time in a space. The dining room was one of the most recently completed spaces.

5:25And I say that because that iteration is probably the most recent thing that I've done to the home. And it is very much a connecting space in our home. It connects the front hall where we have our staircase and our center hall colonial to the kitchen. And because of that, it is a room that we pass through probably 65 times a day. So it needed to be something that felt comfortable in that regard. So we wanted it to feel like you were able to walk through it. And because we live in a more rural location, the idea of bringing the outside in always really appealed to me. And our really dear friends at Casa Gusto had just installed their first papier-mâché paneling in their shop in West Palm.

6:21and I saw what they were capable of doing with that 3D paper mache and from there it was sort of off to the races to figure out how we could use that to sort of have this be a room that felt like an experience each time you pass through it. And it's stunning. It definitely feels like an experience. I mean there are sculptural paper mache flowers and leaves coming out of everywhere. Yeah. Can you describe it just for our listeners? Sure. It does feel very magical. So the entire thing is rendered in papier-mâché. And what that allowed us to do was to create boiserie paneling. So the entire room is done in a series of 67 panels, which are all numbered and pre-measured.

7:10And the reason that it's important for them to flow in a consecutive order is because the design in that room was based off of the Tree of Life motif. And so that organic nature of that tree and the vines that come from it actually move all the way around the room in a sequential order. And then we have this really cool tile ceiling, which is also paper mache. So it pulls in a little bit of color into what is otherwise a very monotone space. And my girls, and I think several people that have visited because I entertain in there often have said that it has almost an ethereal quality to it yeah um it feels my girls of course their frame of reference is slightly more literary and specific to their age group but they always say when they first saw it they said it feels like narnia which i'll take to be the 10 and 12 year old version of it's magical yeah yes definitely i mean it's truly three dimensional, papier-mâché plastered on every surface of the wall and ceiling.

8:17I mean, it's, I've never seen anything like it. Was there, I mean, is it delicate? Are you, I would almost be worried I'd break it by just walking past it or something. No, it's actually the exact opposite of delicate. And I would say that with total certainty that we have indeed tried to break it Because as I said, it's very much a pass through and we are not precious people. And so because it's all articulated on wires, this papier-mâché is actually quite durable. And then the other thing I would say about it, which I really love, is that because it is wire and therefore fully moldable and can be bent and moved, that if there's a vine that happens to be in your way and you would prefer it not to be, you can always bend it up or bend it back or change sort of the contour of the way the leaves fall against the paneling.

9:09And obviously, as a designer who likes to tweak things, this could be a full-time job for me. I hadn't even thought about that. Wow. Because there's this three dimensional vine crawling off the wall, there's not really an opportunity to add a sideboard or a lot of other furniture. Was that something that you took into consideration? How did you kind of work around that? Is that like... Actually, that was very much an 11th hour decision and perceptive on your part to have called me out on that because originally I had thought that one of the largest walls in that room would receive this really beautiful black jeff and aid break front to house another sort of occupational hazard, which is my China collection.

9:57But once we had the tree of life motif up, it just became very clear that to cover that up in any way with any kind of furniture would be sort of a design tragedy. So we shifted lanes as one does and found furniture sort of that is much more lacy and allows a lot more negative space. So we used an antique French potting table actually as a bar in that room. So that is a functional but also decorative element. The table itself shrunk down in that room. It's around and it has leaves. And we decided that it would be much more on a daily basis functional for us to have a smaller table in that space.

10:46And those are really the primary furniture elements in that room. And because there are so few of them, it both calls attention to them, but also allows the walls to speak in a way that they wouldn't if we hadn't done that. Yeah, it's actually so smart for a room that you're, you know, kind of referring to as a pass-through room, even though that implies that it is not as special as it is. In order to like have that movement, less furniture kind of probably helps. But without the furniture, how are you making your statement and like, you know, making it special? So the wall, gosh, the wall really does a lot of work.

11:22It carries a lot of weight. Yeah. Going even though into the hallway, like you've got these beautiful, you know, talking about all of the details you've added in. I love kind of hearing your crafty moments, you know, doing the super glued ribbon on the wall. And like, where do some of these flourishes come from? Do you just sort of like, do they pop into your brain? Were you like, I need more heaviness on the wall and the staircase? Like where does it sort of the initial idea come from? So the initial idea for having climbing prints is hardly original. I think that's something that's a trope that's been used many times to great effect.

11:57But because this was a light colored wall covering and because the frames themselves and the prints themselves had some of those colors in them, I wanted to do something that allowed me to hang them in a double stack and that pulled the colors from those prints. And so I wanted to do sort of an old fashioned application of having it hung on a ribbon. Next came the craftiness because anyone will tell you that if I can't find something, then I will make it. And therefore having those two unusual colors juxtaposed in the chocolate brown and the saffron yellow was really important to my overall vision.

12:39So that's where the glue gun came in. Well, I love that you're like, I have a very specific thing that I need and hell or high water, I'm going to make this thing because I can't find it. That's exactly hell or high water or numerous blisters, which is normally the result of a glue gun session. Oh my gosh. Well, I, you know, you are clearly a lover of pattern and so, I mean, your own living room, but so many of your spaces are just expertly layered in pattern. pattern and so I mean we have to we have to discuss that because I would love to kind of hear you know your approach to pattern not only where you start but like what is it about pattern that is so essential in one of your spaces?

13:31I think people are always asking and I find it to be an answer that's a little bit mutable and therefore can't always transfer to every space but I would say there are some guidelines when it comes to pattern mixing. So I always like to start with what we call our hero fabric, which is a multi-fabric that's either floral or in some cases geometric, but most often floral, that has several colors in it. And it's something that you really respond to and you love, and you understand that it's sort of the guiding light for that space. And then from that point, you've dictated your color palette with that fabric.

14:12And then you pull from there, to me, some sort of like standard elements. So I would say if it's a multifloral that you've started with, then you're looking at a geometric. Then you're looking at a solid. A geometric scent can sometimes be either like an abstract hand-blocked batik. And if that's the case, then I'll often wave in something that's more traditional, like a ticking stripe or a gingham. And from there, I like to bring in texture because texture to me is really important. And because it is often found in natural materials, it gives all of those patterns a moment of quiet relief, a grounding.

14:52And I think those elements are the most important when it comes to pattern play. But I would say this sort of undefined, like je ne sais quoi, in each of those spaces is something to which you gravitate naturally and therefore have confidence in that it will work. Because if you love something, I think there's an element of just going for it and saying like, this works for me. Well, I just love seeing them all together. And like there was one, I think it was your poundridge um project with the double the living room with the double uh sofas that were back to back um you know overall the effect is so light and airy and i wouldn't necessarily say calming i guess because there is a lot of energy but like it's so um open you know but there are so many patterns.

15:55I mean, there's the sort of geometric neutral on the chairs. There's the floral on the sofas. There's the ottoman. And they're all kind of in the same color palette. There's also a wallpaper. So do you find that people are ever, you know, concerned or do you ever worry like it's, you know, going to be too much or these aren't all going to work together, I guess? So I never worry about whether or not the multitude of patterns will work out, but I have had times where clients have been less sure of the outcome. And I would say that I would never sort of die on the hill for something unless I thought it was going to really work.

16:39And by that, I mean there are times in a project where hopefully you've built up enough creative capital with your clients that if you say you need to trust me, this will work out and you'll love it, that they agree. And I don't think you get to use those cards all the time. But when you do play them, hopefully you play them to great effect. Yeah. So, OK, because there's so many patterns in this one room in particular, but the overall feel is not at all heavy, not at all overdone. Like, how do you think that that is? What is it that you've done in here to you so much, but it feel like not so much?

17:19Does that make sense? I would see there's there's a little bit of a lot. Yeah. I would say one of the things about this space is that it is a large room. right? So you start with that. Then you look at the architectural significance and sort of elements. You have a lot of really wonderful windows and doorways. You have some architectural interest in the columns. You have a non-rectilinear room in the sense that there's a sort of alcove off of it. And then you have a central frame in that space, which is the mantle. So taking into account all of that, I would say you start with the wall covering, which is the understanding that you don't have that much of it in between each of these really large windows.

18:04And so it needs to work for you, but not be overpowering such that you're missing being able to trace that pattern around the space. So we chose a hand-blocked batik because it gave us textural interest and also a repetitious pattern that you wouldn't, for the windows in between, feel like you were missing the offshoot of the vine or something like that. From there, we did the hero fabric, which is the Pierre Frey that we used on the sofas. And I would say that fabric did a ton of things for us because it has a light grounding background, but it has really strong color. And so it allowed us to pull the chocolate brown, the coral, a little bit of the blue, and then of course, that natural feeling.

18:49And from there, you sort of wave in things that make sense. In other words, the hand block batik on the chairs, the grounding element of the black, which you'll see throughout that space. And you pull those elements into each of these seating areas, because ultimately, this is a room that functions and is viewed as though it's three different spaces, It's two seating areas with different patterns and then the game chair area. And I think you do something really beautiful with scale on those patterns too. So the batik that's on the chair feels like it's maybe a sister or a cousin to the pattern that's happening on the walls.

19:31Yes. Because they're both geometric. They're both kind of the same neutral vibe to them. But the scale really kind of helps bring them together. together and help them stand apart. I think you're absolutely right about that. The scale of all of these things is very important. If we had had a super small scale on those chairs, as we chose for that ottoman, they would have read from a distance more like a solid. And we needed them to sort of read as though there was some pattern involved. You know, you mentioned the room being so large. Is that one of the reasons that you needed more pattern there?

20:11Like it sort of adds volume? Yes and no. I would say, in my opinion, there's probably a zillion different ways you could have done that room. And also, then again, in my opinion, to various levels of success, right? But to me, it felt important that those spaces were chunky enough that they felt like you'd arrive somewhere so that one side of the sofa the sitting area wasn't have and the other was have not. Either as it relates to the floor plan, meaning having enough seating for everyone, or as it relates to the fact that each of those were strong enough to stand up to the repetitious nature of having those two sofas be covered in the same thing in two different seating areas.

20:55This episode is brought to you by ChatGPT. Hey, it's Bill Simmons from the Bill Simmons Podcast. Have you guys heard about ChatGPT work? It's the new way to use ChatGPT for bigger multi-step projects. And when you need more than just answers, give ChatGPT work access to your apps and files and it can create real work documents like spreadsheets, slides, and structured reports. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting work mode available on Plus and Pro plans. I love the back-to-back sofas in there just functionally. But I was curious. it looks like you're sort of walking in to the sides of the sofas, right?

21:41So you're kind of walking in and then you have to pick like right or left because the sofa's in the way. Is that ever a consideration? Like I think if, you know, I'm not you, but if I were designing this room, like that would have worried me a little bit, like walking in and then having a stop. But maybe that's not like, I mean. So you'll actually see in the book, there are, as I said, a lot of doors and windows in this room. So the primary way that this room is accessed is from that front hall. And from the front hall, you're actually faced with only one of the sofas. And then beyond that, you see the second seating area and the mantle.

22:22So you aren't really walking into the side of it. But even if you were, I think that's where form and function have to marry. And that, in my opinion, is one of the reasons why we chose on one of those seating areas to have a really comfy plush ottoman where you could put a drink down and put your feet up and it's a little bit more relaxed. Those chairs, in spite of being small-skilled, are very comfortable. And then on the other side of the seating area, it gets a little bit more formal. That's where you might entertain. There's a beautiful coffee table that's perfect for hors d 'oeuvres and drinks.

22:58And then you have inlaid chairs that have a little bit more of a, you know, you've arrived sort of a vibe to them. And so you separate out a little bit the function of those spaces so that you gravitate towards one or the other. I just thought it was such a smart move and something that the average person doing their own house wouldn't because they would, they would like be blocked by that idea of it's going to make it feel smaller when sometimes making it feel smaller is a good thing. And I think like house hunters, for example, or, you know, design shows has made us all feel like we have to always make our room feel bigger.

23:37Whereas it's not a bad thing to make it feel smaller in some ways, you know. Yeah. And burst it out into sort of usable zones. You know, You have a room that size. And I think if we hadn't put a game table over in the alcove, they may never have walked over there. Right. Yeah. Well, I just loved all of the pattern in the book because, you know, I think for a while now, maybe the last in like all of the 2000s or to 10s, there was so much solid and so much, you know, neutrals and solids, which are beautiful. But we kind of, I don't know, I feel like there's been a fear of pattern. And so I love seeing all the pattern, not only because in many ways, functionally, you know, it's easier to live with, like more forgiving, but it's just so much more fun and so much more exciting.

24:30Right. And very personalized. I would say the one thing about sort of the aughts as it relates to design trends is when it did feel like there was a lot of gray and white. I suppose you really could be the person that loves gray and white, but it was being used in such perfusion that it made it difficult to believe that it was what everyone was gravitating towards. Whereas having more color and more pattern allows a specificity that feels very personalized. Yeah. Yeah. And that's one of the things that I took away from this book is that there's so much pattern and there's such a fearlessness with your use of pattern that it started making me go around my house and be like, okay, well, where can I be fearless with pattern?

25:17And how can I add some more things. And I just feel like that's always a good success for a design book. It's a nice time. I love hearing that. That makes me so happy. I wanted to talk about the Bridgehampton residence. I thought that that was such a fantastic use of pattern, but also humor. I feel like in some of the pieces and choices And one of the things that I also noticed, because you've got playfulness, you've got sheep in the entry, you've got a bit of tradition with a portrait of a gentleman that's kind of given a side eye. You know, there's a lot of humor going on there, but a lot of tradition.

26:08What were your thoughts when you were doing this home? I think that it is always fun to have clients that are willing to, not just willing, but encouraging you to sort of conceptualize it from start to finish. And this was a really wonderful project for that reason, because they really trusted our vision. And because of that, it felt like we were sort of doing things with like a wink and a nod that allowed it to feel, as you said, a little bit more lighthearted. So, for instance, in that entryway, the juxtaposition of what would be a very traditional sort of ancestor style portrait with these very like sort of modern Lolan-esque black sheep just felt like a really interesting moment.

26:59and pairing all of that with this sort of antique inlaid, very like irreverent front hall table, all of it together just felt really interesting. And I would say that throughout the house, there was sort of that capability to sort of be like, well, what would be interesting to do in this space as opposed to just pleasing? Yeah. There were some other things about this project that made me kind of stop and recognize some things that you've done in some other projects as well. And I think for here, it was the scale of art and mirrors. In the living room of this home, it has the double height ceilings in the living room.

27:51And you just went huge, huge with these botanical prints and then stack them. And then over the mantle, there's a giant mirror. And it also, I think, does that play with a little bit of humor, with something that feels like it should be a precious, small botanical. How'd you go about the living room? So the living room was sort of like a guiding light for the entire project in that this home is in the Hamptons. It was very light, very white, and a lot of white when we took on the project. So the first thing that we really wanted to do in this great room was to warm up those walls. and in doing so, call attention to some of the things that, you know, someone might have looked at as being possible obstacles, but to us felt more like opportunities.

28:52In other words, that you have this really big climbing wall and have really interesting shaped windows and then a roof line that cuts through all of that and a mantle that looks like, you know, you might be able to roast a boar in it. I mean, all of those things scale-wise were really unusual. And so turning that on its head, making that have that natural faux bois wall covering, that was the beginning of warming that space up. And then as you suggest, taking something that's traditionally quite diminutive and often very feminine and rendering it in grand scale appropriate to that of the or roasting fireplace mantle, and then calling attention with the contrast in the molding in the windows around that fireplace allowed us to make that a focal point as opposed to something that would detract from the rest of the space.

29:49I loved that room for the, I think, example that people can take from it. You know, we get so many questions about double height living rooms. I think for the non-designer, but someone who's trying to make sense of the space, it's so challenging. Yeah, this felt masterful. Yeah, yeah, because, and we kind of talked about this actually on a recent episode, everything on the wall is very overscale, right? The art, the mirror, even the light fixture, but then all of the furniture is normal human scale, which I think often people almost get that backwards. Like they want to fill this huge sectional in a room like that.

30:36And then they put like teeny tiny art over the mantle. And it's like, no, like you're going to drown in the sofa and then you're never going to fill up any wall. And like it's you're you're doing it backwards. I would always rather have traditionally scaled furniture and more of it than something that's so large that you'll never use it again. And this room presented an opportunity and a challenge because it's a great room. So it is open to the kitchen, it is open to the front, and it's open to the sunroom. And so every one of those angles when it came to conceptualizing this floor plan had to be considered.