McAlpine

Because this 1960s home in Nashville’s Forest Hills neighborhood had such great bones — tall windows, arched doors, dark exposed beams and neatly refined millwork — Ray Booth (at right, with partners, from left, Bobby McAlpine and Greg Tankersley) settled on a pared-down palette of white, beige, blue and brown to allow the architectural details to shine. “The clients, who are a young family, loved the existing architecture, so it was in the small details that the magic had to be made,” notes Booth, a partner at the design firm McAlpine (which has headquarters in Montgomery, Alabama, and Nashville, Tennessee, in addition to satellite offices in New York and Atlanta, Georgia). One small decision with big impact: varying the heights and textures of the living room’s seating, as seen in the custom tufted-back sofa by Nickey Kehoe, the tall vintage leather armchair (likely Frits Henningsen) and the Konekt Thing 1 stool, with its playful skirt of creamy white horsehair.