Amy Leonard claims, with a wink, that she and her interior designer business partner, Ingrid Leess, possess a “super power:” “We have the ability to envision what something looks like before it happens.”
It’s not that Leonard and Leess—who maintain separate offices in Westport and New Canaan, respectively—have ESP or can see into the future, but they are such seasoned designers that they know the effect an object, a color, a pattern will have prior to its installation in a home. For a new beach house in a tiny town in southern Maine, Leonard and Leess were commissioned to fill a four-bedroom, Shingle-style. home with furnishings that would suit multiple generations of a family. The couple who commissioned them (Leonard’s brother-in-law and his wife) live in arid New Mexico most of the year, but retreat to the picturesque coastal community in summers, a place to which they and their now-grown children have been coming for decades.
With good, sound familial relations, Leonard was willing to take on the project. “They hired their bossy sister-in-law,” Leonard says, “and with their blessing and input, Ingrid and I helped them make their new home.” Where there had once been an old, rundown house, now sits a steeply pitched vernacular residence designed by local architectural designer Travis Kinney, a dwelling perfectly suited for the town center (marked by a single seasonally opened general store, though the Atlantic Ocean remains open year round). Once the house was complete and Leonard and Leess began their work furnishing its rooms— from big furniture items to candlesticks—the goal was, as Leess recalls, “to make a joyful place. The homeowner used the word ‘happy’ right away, and that’s what Amy and I took as our starting point.”
The living room is furnished with a pair of Lee Industries swivel chairs upholstered in Perennials performance fabric. Throw pillows in a Rebecca Atwood Dashes tangerine fabric and blue-and- white pillows through Good Goods top the Lee Industries sofa.
The kitchen dining area is furnished with a custom reclaimed-wood table made by Bob McGrath of Rustique and chairs from Maine Woodworks.
The kitchen island sports Benjamin Moore’s Winter Lake, the bar stools are through BluDot, and the pendant lights above the island are through Letifly.
Pantry cabinetry is painted in Benjamin Moore’s Land of Liberty, and the pendant light is from Barn Light Electric.
Powder room walls in Schumacher’s Chrysanthemum wallpaper pairs with a custom vanity in Farrow + Ball’s Folly Green.
The upstairs hallway features a vintage ladderback chair, a runner through Jaipur Living and café curtains in a Thibaut stripe
In the primary bedroom, Roman shades in a Lee Jofa fabric through Kravet complement a headboard in a Serena & Lily stripe; the bedside lamp is also from Serena & Lily.
Sconces in the primary bathroom are from Worley’s Lighting, and the tile is from Old Port Specialty Tile.
A guest- room bed by Maine Woodworks is dressed with a Pottery Barn quilt.
Architectural designer Travis Kinney thoughtfully positioned windows to capture views.
The Second Wind Sails shower curtain in a guest bath was fashioned from repurposed Dacron and spinnaker sails.
The natural hues of Maine’s rocky shoreline established the palette inside a new vacation home.
Interior designers Ingrid Leess and Amy Leonard with architectural designer Travis Kinney.
It’s not surprising that people who live most of the year in the monochromatic Southwest, wanted a summer house filled with a variety of blues evocative of the water that surrounds the property. Indeed, shades of the hue fill the rooms—as Roman shades, a kitchen island and backsplash, bathroom vanities, table runners—but the designers wanted to push their clients to embrace other colors, too. Leonard recalls taking the homeowner to a tile store in nearby Portland where they both looked at a spectrum of saturated colors. “She and I had the best time looking at so many colors,” says Leonard, “and when she realized we could use some on a floor, she said ‘Oh, this is crazy good.’”
While Leonard and Leess adhered to the main directive to stay to blues and whites, they introduced vibrant greens into a pantry, guest bedroom and bath, and red chairs on an outside deck. But it was when the designers saw a favorite framed poster of the homeowners’—an orange graphic composition celebrating the Santa Fe Opera—that they knew, as Leonard says, “Not everything in the house had to match. The homeowner gave us license to pick bold fabric swatches with big flowers.” Adds Leess, “Suddenly, the homeowner didn’t want it all to be monochromatic blue.”
Meanwhile, virtually every room, too, remains infused with the natural hues of clouds and water and rocky shoreline, something Kinney accomplished with a clever spacing of windows. As an architect, he is so prolific in the area that other houses of his are visible from this house’s deck. “The homeowners knew my work from seeing others in town,” he says, “and my very first schematic drawing is what they liked.”
To soften the brand-new quality of the house, Leonard and Leess mixed in antiques, most sourced locally. “We threw in the odd ball thing here and there,” says Leonard. “And we had a budget to stick to, and Ingrid and I enjoy the challenge of a budget. It can make you more creative.”
With the house done and the family already arriving for their summer sojourn, Leess is content knowing that what she and Leonard thought the home should be is indeed the form it has taken. “Even though they are not my family,” says Leess, “it’s very special to work with a family who loves to be together. When you work with such people, you get to know them on a personal level.”
