September 14, 2025The clients were clear: They didn’t want bright color. Having lived in a gray-and-beige apartment in New York City for years, they planned to migrate to larger quarters with the purchase of a four-story, contemporary-style townhouse in the West Village. Contemplating the move, the family — a businessman husband and food-writer wife, plus their young son — decided they wouldn’t be bringing any furnishings with them, save for some artwork. But they still intended to stay true to their predilection for a predominantly neutral palette.
So, when Sarah Sargeant — founder and principal of the New York–based boutique interior design studio Cochineal Design — showed the couple an image of a daybed with a bold blue base during an exercise gauging style preferences, it came as no surprise when “they were like, ‘No,’ ” she recalls.
She believed, however, that the house, which featured rather austere architecture, needed more than beige to nurture its new homeowners. “It was very cookie-cutter and very linear,” she says. “Color adds warmth and personality, but we wanted to offer it in subtle, earthy ways.”
Thanks to Sargeant’s powers of pursuasion, the clients eventually embraced the suggestion. “They came out of their comfort zone and said, “Let’s do it,’ ” says Sargeant, who worked closely on the project with Cochineal’s studio director, Risa Emen. To the designers, “doing it” meant using muted color sparingly and in subtle ways and then deploying prints and patterns along with rich textures and custom and vintage furnishings, to mitigate the new build’s architectural severity. The result is a design-forward home that functions equally well for the family and for their myriad guests.
Sargeant and Emen’s textural plays throughout include walls coated in plaster or upholstered in suede. They installed heavy velvet drapes in bedrooms, and gave mohair, shearling and wool a large role.
The duo also added curves in nearly every space, sourcing pieces with organic forms: a circular French burled-walnut side table in the living room, a round ebonized end table in the bedroom and stools in the kitchen whose ladder-backs have scalloped rails.
“All of this was intended to soften this sort of very severe architecture,” Sargeant explains.
Vintage pieces also helped the home mellow out. Using them, though, required Sargeant and Emen to do some more persuasion. Having grown up in a home filled with antiques, the husband “liked the idea of new things,” Sargeant says. Pieces like the mid-century dining chairs, with their minimal forms, convinced him that vintage could look modern.
The firm’s work here was eye-opening and horizon expanding not only for the clients but for the studio as well. “There has been growth on our end,” says Sargeant. “This project was the jump-start to our getting more comfortable with patterns and prints.”
Here, she takes us on a tour.
Living Room
The family loves to entertain and wanted the living room to be the beating heart of the home. Sargeant installed an asymmetrical earthy-limestone fireplace surround and hid the TV over it in a cabinet whose doors she had covered with a geometric wallpaper by Amy Meier.
As for the furnishings, “we always knew we’d be incorporating some blockbuster vintage,” says Sargeant. One such standout is a Jean Prouvé daybed with pull-out table, sourced from 1stDibs. “The wife saw it as a special piece,” says Sargeant. “Their son thinks it’s a trampoline, which is fun, so we had the mattress secured for him to safely jump around. The whole family loves it. It’s the cool piece in the living room.”
A vintage shearling-upholstered slipper chair, by Jørgen Bækmark for FDB Møbler, offers another landing spot for kids and adults alike. To these, Sargeant added a bespoke French burled-walnut side table, which delights with its concealed pull-out, mirrored-bottom drink trays that function as coasters. “Surprisingly heavy,” according to Sargeant, it is sturdy enough to stay stable even when kids bump into it.
Dining Room
The angular, clean-lined trestle table in the dining room is custom, while the curvaceous chairs, found on 1stDibs, are mid-century Italian. Sargeant had them reupholstered in mohair. “Everything needed to be comfortable,” she says. “Although the wife understood vintage and knew how these chairs would turn out, the husband thought new was best. During installation, he saw how mixing vintage and new worked. We earned his trust.” The art is by Larry Zox.
Kitchen
“We elevated the existing conditions,” Sargeant says of the kitchen, whose cabinets she had freshly painted in a soft Farrow & Ball black called Railings and equipped with new brass hardware. She finished the space with a quartet of custom counter stools from Light and Dwell whose scalloped, wave-like ladder backs add a bit of playfulness.
Primary Bedroom
Sargeant proposed doing either a custom blue silk mohair bed or a built-in walnut one. “The husband was like, ‘What if we did both?’,” Sargeant recalls. The design team enthusiastically obliged, cladding the wall behind the cerulean-hued upholstered headboard in richly grained walnut. The room also contains an ebonized end table and an upholstered bench attributed to Gio Ponti, both found on 1stDibs. “I think it’s the clients’ favorite room,” Sargeant says.
Primary Bath
Creating a classic bath, with a gray-and-white marble floor and a sculptural tub, Sargeant softened the hard surfaces with a wood side table by Locke Bell, sourced through Hostler Burrows, and textured drapes.
Children’s Bedroom
Sargeant says that this whimsical space is the room in the home that makes her smile the most. She furnished it with Fornasetti wallpaper, custom twin beds upholstered in a Schumacher print and heavy blue-velvet drapes. A vintage slipper chair upholstered in shearling provides additional texture. “It’s so not our typical room,” Sargeant says, referring to the mix of color, print and pattern. “But I love it.”
Nursery
When Sargeant began the project, the wife was pregnant with the couple’s second child, who may eventually share the children’s bedroom with their first. In the meantime, the designer created this stylish and fanciful nursery, pairing a wall mural that recalls illustrations from a picture book with a mid-century-modern-inspired crib.
