September 25, 2026Most people hope their home will feel like a refuge from the outside world. In the case of a South Dakota cattle ranch, its remote location alone — on 3,000 acres about a 30-minute drive from Sioux Falls — makes it almost a world unto itself. But when the couple who live there decided to build a new house on the property, 1stDibs 50 interior designer Molly Kidd took the refuge concept a step further, creating a prairie oasis where the family can comfortably hunker down when they’re snowed in and generously entertain in more temperate times.
“The winters are just so harsh out there,” says Kidd. “Sometimes, they’re in their home for days when they can’t get out.”
With 10 bedrooms plus a bunk room, the 16,000-square-foot residence sleeps 35, which comes in particularly handy in the fall, when friends fly in from all over for the family’s annual pheasant shoot.
“The clients spend so much of their time there that they wanted a place that could house lots of people,” the designer says. “It’s a big one.”
Kidd, whose namesake studio is based in Salem, Oregon, was involved in the project from the planning stages. This enabled her — in collaboration with VeldCo, a Sioux Falls real estate and construction firm — to provide early design direction to the first-time clients. The parents of five young children, they had outgrown the 1950s-era farmhouse on the property and wanted a new one that better reflected their Danish heritage and was absolutely “ ‘indestructible,’ ” she says. “That was one of their words.”
She began not with drawings or a mood board but with a floral arrangement. Kidd got her start in the design field by working as a florist while a student at Oregon State University. Although she quickly segued into blogging about interiors and then designing them herself, to this day she kicks off each project by conceptualizing an environment through the lens of flowers.
For the South Dakota ranch, “it was a lot of wildflowers and a lot of texture,” she says. “It was very oversize but natural — lots of greens, some browns and some richer red tones.”
The blooms foreshadowed the earthy palette and rustic character Kidd developed for the prairie home over a three-year period. “I didn’t want it to feel too grandiose,” she says. “We wanted it to feel very welcoming, very warm, very lived in.”
With a traditional ranch house in mind, Kidd brought the stone of the exterior into the foyer, kept the entryway’s ceiling low, to engender a sense of intimacy, and lined the floors with wide planks of engineered white oak. In the grand main living space beyond, the design team reached for more contemporary ideas, including an open kitchen and a soaring stack of windows affording views of the vast landscape.
There, twin custom sofas with bench cushions upholstered in a durable Rose Tarlow fabric face each other in front of a stone mantel, all beneath ceiling beams salvaged from a rundown barn. To provide coziness, Kidd sourced a pair of vintage shearling chairs on 1stDibs. “The architecture is so large in scale — the ceilings, beams and fireplace — we needed pieces that had presence without feeling visually heavy,” she says. “These have this incredible sculptural shape, but the shearling makes them feel soft and almost a little primitive. They’re the kind of pieces that make a new home feel as though it has already lived a life.”
The coffee table, side tables and console she brought in are all vintage, too. “A lot of the wood pieces in there are very worn, and that was intentional,” Kidd says. “The coffee table has a lot of nicks and grooves in it. It’s patinated, hearty.”
Kidd feels strongly about prioritizing vintage furnishings. She is committed to what she calls her “50/50 initiative,” pledging that at least half the items she sources for a project must have had past lives, for both sustainability and stylistic reasons. “Even with new pieces,” she says, “I try to ask myself, ‘Would this piece eventually end up in an antiques store?’ ”
In the home’s dining nook, for instance, she surrounded a custom table made from reclaimed wood with a set of vintage spindle-back chairs in oak. She nodded to the clients’ Scandinavian roots with two other vintage finds: a brass overhead light fixture from 1stDibs with swooping arms and linen shades and, on the wall, carved plate racks with a folk-craft quality, filled with the family’s heirloom china.
The main kitchen features two marble-top islands — one a work surface lit by twin Matthew Cox hanging lanterns with a farmhouse sensibility, the other sporting custom stools for casual dining. An arched doorway leads to a prep kitchen with a butcher block island dating back to the turn of the last century. The final major piece Kidd acquired for the house, the island dips gently in the middle, a charming result after generations of use. “I spent years finding the perfect one,” she says. “When all the cabinetry is new and looks nice, I like having this beaten-up piece in the center.”
The basement houses a sprawling recreation space, which includes basketball and racquetball courts as well as a golf simulator room, the first Kidd has designed.
Upstairs, Kidd designed the primary suite as a private retreat for the clients. “I mean, they have five young kids,” says the designer, herself the mother of three.
Two vintage Danish armchairs from 1stDibs form a cozy seating nook by the windows. With their exposed solid-wood frames and shearling seat and back cushions, they have “beautiful weight and patina,” Kidd says. “Their proportions are generous without feeling bulky, and their slight recline makes them genuinely comfortable rather than simply decorative. I also loved that they weren’t a perfect pair. They speak the same language without being identical.”
Kidd designed a custom upholstered bed, then selected a natural wool rug in a muted tone to complement the bedding. She completed the look with slender brass vintage Scandinavian sconces from 1stDibs and an antique farmhouse bench constructed from a thick solid-oak plank with irregular edges resting on splayed trestle-form leg. “It has the kind of surface that can only come from age and use,” Kidd says. The primary bathroom takes advantage of the unobstructed views — the nearest building is miles away — by positioning the square-shaped tub in a windowed alcove. Light streaming in reflects off the Carrara marble wainscoting and countertop.
“You are such a product of your environment,” she explains. “Spaces have the power to make somebody’s life so much better.”
Creating them does the same for her life. “I never get bored,” Kidd says. “I never want to copy-paste something. I always tell clients, ‘I don’t want to design something that’s already on Pinterest.’ ” Instead, she wants to design interiors that others will see on Pinterest and then use as a model for their own homes. “That’s always the goal,” she concludes.
