They said, ‘This is our happy place. We want it to feel happy,’” says decorator Sara Haydock, of her clients’ Meredith and Greg Imber’s desires for their Quogue beach house. Sara and her sister Zan Young, the duo behind Elliott Interiors, understood the mission intimately because Quogue was their happy place, too. The sisters grew up spending summers in the village and had known Greg since childhood, and Haydock had even recently bought a house right across the street.
When the Imbers bought their home a decade ago, they had renovated to bring the kitchen and baths up to date, but they’d never gotten around to decorating. With their kids now 10 and 6, and well out of the coloring-on-the-walls years, they were ready. “The bones were wonderful—the vaulted ceiling, wainscotting and shutters—this really was a great blank slate to decorate,” says Haydock. But within was a mishmash of hand-me-down furniture and a large open-concept room that Meredith and Greg had never figured out how to arrange.
In the living room, an armchair from Chaddock is covered in a Fermoie print.
Wallpaper by Soane serves as a backdrop to the mirror by Fleur Home. Chairs by Mainly Baskets surround a custom dining table by Dunes and Duchess.
A wall covering by Lulie Wallace is a focal point in one of the baths.
The primary bedroom’s headboard is upholstered in a Peter Fasano print. The wallpaper is by Lee Jofa.
To begin, the designers set out to solve the puzzle of the floorplan in the main room.“We wanted to create many spaces within the main room,” says Young. Their solution hinged on a custom banquette and an oval dining table, which allowed for them to scooch the dining area over to one side of the room. Next they nestled a sofa into a bay window and created a seating arrangement around it, building in flexibility with a pair of x-benches that could move about the room as needed. The remaining corner was reimagined as a reading nook with a chair and ottoman. “The use of space really transformed how they can live there,” says Young.
With the furniture plan settled, the sisters made a plan to to inject joy into the décor. “The backbone of the ‘happy factor’ lies in the color palette: It’s all very playful,” says Young. “The way the color and the patterns interact is coordinated, yet unexpected.
Think: pink layered over sunshine yellow and summer-y greens. They papered the main room in a Soane wallpaper, which Haydock says they chose to bring the outside in, while a Christopher Farr Cloth fabric for one of the sofas allowed them to bring in a pop of tangerine. Meredith confesses she was nervous about some of the bolder choices, but she says, “I just trusted them implicitly: I didn’t want to get in the way.” Today she adds, “The yellow and white fabric on the banquette worked so well, and now I want to paper everything.”
Mindful not to be too bold, the design duo tempered the riot of color with plenty of beachy rattan and sisal. “The natural fibers really ground it and create a little bit of a neutral space, so the patterns can shine,” says Haydock. They also took a more restrained approach to the primary bedroom, where the patterns are all light and airy, and in the study, where they narrowed the palette to just shades of blue, referencing the nearby ocean. One place they didn’t hold back: The kids’ bathroom, where a Lulie Wallace fish-print wallpaper adorns the walls and delights visitors.“We love the feeling you get from being in this space: It’s a happy house,” says Young. “A very happy house,” Haydock adds.