Rooms that look good and work the way you want, especially when you’re entertaining guests? Those are the shining-star spaces of the home. Here, we rounded up five rooms from five different projects; each one has a few savvy design moves that we hope inspire you this holiday-and-hosting season!
1. RAISING THE BAR
Bars are back in an epic way: While they used to be shoved into corners (or worse, holed up in basements), now homeowners and interior designers are integrating beautifully crafted bar spaces into dining rooms and kitchens, living rooms and even libraries! We love when a bar has its own design “moment,” as it does in this Bonnie Brae renovation, where the bar is directly off the dining room in the hallway to the kitchen. We carried the high-gloss wallcovering from the dining-room ceiling to the wall of the bar area, which unifies the spaces visually. The custom shelving showcases beautiful liquor bottles, and a door to the kitchen—complete with a porthole—becomes a surprising yet significant architectural detail. The experience of making your drink is full of sensory pleasures—as it should be!
2. POPULAR MUSIC
When the owners purchased this large cabin outside of Steamboat Springs, the home came with a few heirlooms and antiques, including this upright piano. Instead of hiding it in a corner, we used it as a fun and playful anchor for the dining room: It doesn’t have the visual weight of a hutch, which is often the furnishing of choice to play counterpoint (get it?) to the dining table. This lightness allowed us to hang a Western-themed contemporary photograph by David Yarrow above it. Plus, the owners had the piano tuned, and now “dinner and a show” can all happen in the same space: So often, for musically inclined families, pianos become a huge design centerpiece in a home, but we love that this placing in the dining room is unusual but also not at all contrived: A person can play a simple melody without feeling like they’re “on stage,” or the owners can have a musician come entertain while they host a party.
Duet Images Left to Right | The Bar at Project Elizabeth, Bonnie Brae, Denver
| The Dining Room at Project All Saints, Steamboat Springs, CO
3. A WARM WELCOME
The fun part of this outdoor entertaining space is that it’s in the front of the house. The culture of the neighborhood—Denver’s charming Hilltop—is to know and socialize with neighbors, so the homeowners wanted a cozy space to enjoy a pre-dinner glass of wine with whomever strolls by. When they bought the house, this area was an uneven, grassy space; now, it’s been flattened and defined by classic hardscaping and a fire pit—for warmth in winter and s’mores in summer. In short, it’s a handsome reminder that your entertaining spaces don’t all have to be indoors (or in the backyard)!
4. THE SWISS ARMY KNIFE
Gone are the days when basements were the scary, dingy spaces to which naughty children were exiled. Today, basements offer promise for whole-family hangouts when the rooms are designed to be appealing and flexible. For this Columbine Country Club home, Duet’s clients began with investing in 10-foot-high ceilings to make the subterranean floor feel expansive. Then we designated areas in this basement room for all their entertaining needs: a game table for poker nights or family Clue time, an easy-to-access bar and beverage spot, and a custom-sized sectional sofa that comfortably sits six adults. (Design tip: Sectional sofas are so voluminous, they’re better suited for basements than they are for main-floor rooms; they’re hard to keep them looking tidy, but they do offer excellent lounging!) The room accommodates the family’s goals for casual entertaining. (And any child banished to this space will most definitely have a blast.)
5. FROM SCRATCH
The owners of this Boulder home have a wide-open floorplan, in which the kitchen, dining, and living areas are all open to one another. To balance the space and meet their entertainment needs, our clients wanted a giant kitchen island—so we gave them one that stretches more than 20 feet! To balance the scale—and the large windows on the opposite side of this wide-open floorplan—we hung a pair of enormous lanterns. Then we solved the issue of where guests would sit: The iconic Cherner stools don’t take up a lot of mass while offering sculptural good looks. After all, with a kitchen integrated into the areas where guests gather, we all know that friends and family will flock to the kitchen to hang out.
Duet Images Left to Right | The Front Patio at Project Cranmer, Hilltop, Denver
| The Lower Family Room at Project Fairway, Columbine Valley, Littleton
| The Kitchen at Project Alder, Boulder, CO
Duet can create an epic home gathering space for entertaining your friends and family. Reach out today to learn how we “Create Beauty As You Define It.”
