The 2016 HC&G IDA Winners: Interior Design

The owners of this well-proportioned spec house in Sag Harbor asked for a beach retreat with “more than a touch of glam, a place where they could entertain friends and family,” recalls designer Laura Michaels.

She responded by creating a mostly gray palette that judge Michael Haverland describes as “soothing and consistent.” Judge Matthew Patrick Smyth lauds its “striking, handsome materials and textures.”

For an architecturally distinctive house in Amagansett, designer Susanne Kelley maximized textures while minimizing colors, adding warmth to otherwise streamlined rooms. She chose not to compete with the vistas through the floor-to-ceiling glass walls and instead allowed the landscape to become another element of the design. “I love the open views to the trees beyond, which reflect the grays inside,” remarks judge Ron Wendt.

In this East Hampton residence, Julia Roth was careful to stick to a palette of earthy materials: stone, steel, concrete, and wood, as evidenced by a dramatic two-story fireplace clad in ipe. The owner’s antique wood sculptures and abstract paintings serve as sources of color throughout, along with select pops of vibrant hues in the furnishings. Wendt praises the project’s “horizontal lines and great, fun colors.”

“Simplicity is hard to do, and this does it,” says judge Russell Groves of Dale Cohen’s concept for a Southampton saltbox. After spearheading the home’s renovation, Cohen took advantage of the large, vaulted spaces, hanging iconic wallpaper patterns from Knoll, imbuing the rooms with various shades of blue, and employing modernist textiles worthy of a design museum. “Well-edited and refined,” concludes Smyth.