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Not every decision is the best one for your space. Even decorators don’t always get it right on the first (or second) try. 

Originally, this front room was a dark, intimate setting for candlelit dinners, but after applying a few browns and purples, it seemed too dark. The solution was washing the walls and floor in light buttercream by Farrow & Ball and making the ceiling pale pink. 

Instead of restaining the house’s battered (and unpleasantly orange) floors, Simonaire took a cost-saving route, painting them a glamorous and glossy oil-based white. 

A striped kilim rug makes a rare appearance in the living room; Simonaire tends to prefer bare floors in her own spaces.

Hanging a pair of enormous Noguchi lanterns where one might have sufficed. Café curtains made of silk from Clarence House play off the pink of the ceiling and maximize the abundant natural light, but have the same enveloping effect as full draperies. 

  
 

Even the tableware is artfully composed—a refined palette of whites and glass arranged to look appealing and be within easy reach. 

 

Vintage bentwood Thonet chairs and a slate-topped steel table Simonaire designed form the centerpiece of

her unfussy kitchen setup.