September 13, 2026As 1stDibs 50 designer Zoë Feldman tells the story, a commission to reimagine an empty-nester couple’s coastal New Hampshire home began with a friendly getaway weekend.
Two years after she completed their Washington, D.C., pied-à-terre — a late-19th-century townhouse not far from her own Georgetown headquarters — the clients invited her to stay with them in the Northeast. Over the course of their D.C. collaboration, clients and designer had become really close, Feldman says. This New England getaway was meant to be pure pleasure.
But at a certain point during the visit, leisure began to mix with business — in the best, and most flattering, way possible. The clients told Feldman that even though they’d called the New Hampshire house their home for more than three decades, it no longer felt like it represented them.
“They were so in love with the D.C. place, they wanted to pull that into this,” she says.
Just what was meant by “that”? Several things, actually, a suite of elevated elements that add up to Feldman’s signature: There was that expertly balanced mix of traditional, modernist and new; those swaths of rich color and pops of pattern; plus contemporary art, which in the D.C. project included pieces by Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Rauschenberg and Lee Krasner.
“Their taste had evolved so much from working on that first project,” Feldman says, explaining that the couple had become more sophisticated, to some degree more modern and “insatiable” when it came to art.
So, she set about reimagining the New Hampshire property, focusing her energies on completely revamping the spaces that got used the most — the kitchen, the great room and the primary bedroom, along with two additional bedrooms — while giving a lighter refresh to the living room and a petite sunroom.
“It was not an overall overhaul,” the designer says. “It was very partial. But it made a huge impact.”
From the outset, the clients wanted to retain something of the house’s neoclassical New England atmosphere, which Feldman appreciated. “It is very homey, cozy,” she says. “It has an approachable quality, an almost nostalgic Americana feeling to it, like it could be in a Christmas movie.”
Describing the existing interior architecture and decorations as “only traditional,” she continues, “It wasn’t uninteresting, but it wasn’t interesting either.”
Feldman managed to both supply some of that missing interest and emphasize the existing charms by weaving color throughout: She unfurled shades of blue and green, terracotta, port and blush tones. From there, she layered in vintage and new furniture, many pieces upholstered in patterned and textured textiles. Walnut millwork connects to the style of old New England, while new artworks — fewer than in the D.C. house but still a presence — bring things firmly into the 21st century.
In the lightly refreshed living room, for example, a 2022 Anne Griffith abstract hangs on a wall covered with a woven Phillip Jeffries paper. It presides over a vignette of furniture composed of the clients’ existing sofa, Art Deco–style armchairs, a scalloped ottoman covered in a Zak + Fox fabric and amber Venetian-glass table lamps from Antique Resources. The painting’s immersive colors catch the eye in this relatively neutral-toned space, previewing the hues to come.
A deep green enlivens the kitchen, most notably on the new millwork framing the room’s skylights and wall of windows. To illuminate the space when the the sun isn’t flooding in, the designer selected contemporary fixtures with a vintage sensibility: curving gilded-iron Visual Comfort sconces with Fortuny fabric shades between the windows and industrial-style unlacquered brass pendants over the hightop table, where walnut stools tuck under the leathered-quartzite counters and the clients can tuck into aperitivos while cooking.
A maritime-themed charcoal drawing by Frank Ayer hangs in the kitchen’s breakfast nook, where Feldman clad an adjacent wall with a scenic wallpaper that evokes the nearby coast in colonial times — although it actually depicts Turkey’s Bosphorus shore. To ensure the vintage-style mural didn’t feel too traditional, Feldman paired the oak French trestle table in front of it with mid-20th-century wood and woven-rush chairs by Charles Dudouyt. Above hangs a brass and milk-glass RTO pendant; not unlike the house itself, the chandelier’s classic materials belie its contemporary construction.
Feldman drenched the walls, moldings, ceilings and brickwork of the adjacent sunroom in a deep terracotta that provides a complementary contrast to the greens and blues of the kitchen and breakfast nook. A new bobbin-legged desk from Nickey Kehoe and an Italian chair from Morentz sit in one window, keeping company with the clients’ existing cane chairs, coffee table, mirror and chest.
In the nearby great room, the designer left the walls a light neutral tone, painting only the ceiling. “We don’t always want to put color on the walls,” Feldmn says. “It can get boring.” She used a nearly black shade of blue to help create a sense of intimacy and human scale in the high-ceilinged, expansive room. “It’s a way to make a cavernous space warm,” she says.
Feldman sought out furnishings that could hold their own against the room’s generous proportions and statement-making ceiling. The custom carpet stands out for its bold pattern, while the curving but clean lines of the velvet-covered 1930s Danish armchairs command attention, as do the Loro Piano–upholstered contemporary couches, thanks to the contrast between the deep port hue of one and the creamy ivory of the other.
“Every piece needed to be visually dense, not necessarily large” Feldman says, noting that the idea wasn’t for them to “compete with the ceiling” but instead “to exist within this experience.”
Upstairs, the use of color to create in intimate atmosphere continues in the dusty-rose-hued primary suite. The designer employed the same Pierre Frey fabric for the curved headboard, the Nickey Kehoe settee and the shades of the lamps on the nightstand.
“In bedrooms, I don’t like a lot of material or color shifts, because you want them to be soothing,” she explains. “This added interest without changing or adding materials.” Also adding interest: a 1926 color woodcut by American printmaker Gustave Baumann, which hangs above a petite table by the windows.
Feldman hopes the homeowners’ story here — and the way their aesthetic horizons have expanded as they reimagined their two houses — will inspire others.
“Much of what we like is what we know. But as people engage in design projects, and they work alongside a professional, they discover things about themselves in the process,” says Feldman.
“There’s an introduction and an exposure to new things, and that can change people’s taste,” she continues. “It’s never just clients’ handing over their house and saying, ‘Do your magic. I’ll be back in six months.’ “
