Linda A. Banks and Edith Smith furnish every room of a house prior even to purchasing the items for their clients—at least on paper. As Banks, longtime founder of Banks Design Associates, says, “As nice as it is to have a detailed drawing to make sure a sofa fits in a living room, we create a detailed list—room by room—of everything that’s to go into it and where it’s to go.” Her senior designer, Smith, adds, “We really don’t know exactly what we’re looking for before we start looking for it,” whereupon both Banks and Smith say simultaneously, “And then the hunt begins.”
The Maine-based design team of Banks and Smith (both are Connecticut natives) are seasoned “hunters,” able to stalk and capture the right chairs and armoires, tables and artworks for a project. For 14 months, start to finish, the pair embarked on a search for items to fill all the rooms of a six-bedroom house in Greenwich for a young couple with two children. The homeowners were moving into the stone Georgian-style residence from a Greenwich Village apartment with only a sofa and two chairs.
A Hickory Chair bed in the primary suite features a tall all-mohair headboard. A Vanguard bench is accented with a Colefax & Fowler embroidered trim. Side tables are from Holland MacRae, and an Anna French botanical-themed paper enlivens the walls.
Just as Banks and Smith are fearless in the marketplace, so, too, are the homeowners equally brave when it comes to aesthetics. “I am not afraid of color and pattern and texture,” declares homeowner Kim Nemser. “I am thrilled that wallpaper is back,” she continues, emphasizing botanical patterns that appear to grow to the high ceilings in certain rooms. “I love fringes and trims, because the moment you add a border, you’ve made something your own.”
Banks has a history with the couple, having designed the interiors of their second home in coastal Maine. “Having done the process once before with Linda,” says Nemser, “I knew that the relationship you have with a designer is more important than anything else.”
For years, Banks had kept in storage two colorful French paintings she had bought never knowing where they might wind up, but confident they were fine pieces worthy of the right interior. “Those two paintings were perfect for this living room,” explains Banks. “They were the drivers for the interior palette of the rest of the house. The colors are the thread that carries through room to room.”
The moment the homeowners saw the ivy and the shutters on this house, they knew they had found their new home.
The view from the foyer draws the eye through the house to the backyard pool.
In the living room, a pair of Art Deco grilles bracket a vintage painting from 1stDibs whose hues helped dictate the design of all the rooms.
The expansive living room has multiple seating and working areas, including at a custom “surfboard” table, where Vanguard Furniture ottomans serve as seats, and Cowtan & Tout embroidered linen draperies accent the windows.
Elements in the living room include gilt nesting tables from Mr. Brown, Holland MacRae side tables and Vanguard Furniture chairs. The painting over the sofa is through Black Rock Galleries.
The cozy den is bathed in Farrow & Ball’s high-lacquer Hague Blue, while a Nina Campbell quilted cotton is used on a wing chair.
A custom chandelier illuminates the dining room, where chairs are upholstered in a blue and green Schumacher velvet.
A Hickory Chair bed in the primary suite features a tall all-mohair headboard. A Vanguard bench is accented with a Colefax & Fowler embroidered trim. Side tables are from Holland MacRae, and an Anna French botanical-themed paper enlivens the walls.
An antique lacquered console becomes a seating area with a pair of Lee Industries ottomans.
Office windows are dressed with a Sanderson embroidered-cotton backdrop a Villa & Home desk.
In the family room, Lee Industries’ swivel chairs and a Vanguard sofa flank a Made Goods coffee table.
Indeed, each of the vibrant hues on the canvases appears in the house, the most striking example being the moody blues that envelop the den, a cozy space the homeowner cites as her and her husband’s favorite—while Banks and Smith call it the “sexy den,” a reference they coined for the best room in the house to retreat to for a drink by the fire. To further imbue the room with a signature element, the designers commissioned a painter to add gold-leaf to portions of the coffered ceiling.
A set of vintage Hickory dining chairs found by the design team were reupholstered in a green-blue Schumacher fabric, the ensemble of which assumes a special presence when the room’s crystal chandelier is illuminated. Each of the glass elements replicates either droplets of water, according to Banks and Smith, or icicles, according to the homeowner. “It took seven months to find the right chandelier,” recounts Nemser, “but it was worth the hunt because it’s such a fun element.”
The homeowner cites red as her favorite color (“Is it because I was born on Valentine’s Day?” she suggests rhetorically) to which Banks and Smith responded by infusing the family room with red-patterned draperies fashioned from a Schumacher pattern discovered by their project manager, David Leblanc. The repeating rhythm of the material—from window to window—assumes a striking effect against white-washed beams. Four swivel chairs sport red throw pillows trimmed in a moss fringe—“a detail that takes that room from 30 to a 100 in 10 seconds,” notes Smith.
“I think of this couple as the embodiment of New Traditionalists,” says Banks. “They’re both highly educated, have been surrounded by nice things growing up. They’re uber cool, hip, smart, and each successful in their own right. How could they not be the ideal couple for whom to design?”
