A 1960s Arkansas Bungalow Gets a Cinematic Glow-Up

Vaishnavi Nayel Talawadekar
·7 min read

Ten years ago, Anna E. Cottrell walked into a hillside home in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and knew in her bones that it was the one. She didn’t mind that the bungalow was a circa-1961 build, or that it hadn’t been restored for decades. “I immediately felt a very cool California vibe,” the creative director recalls.“I could imagine myself being happy and inspired here. The black concrete floors, clean lines, and floor-to-ceiling windows that wash the space in natural light really sealed the deal.” For the next decade or so, Anna’s prophecy came true. But when her home landed on the National Register of Historic Places, something inside her said it was time to bring the home back to life.

As Whitney recalls, there were several challenges: The large-format windows limited her layout options and the single ceiling plane meant that she couldn’t apply her go-to color drenching technique to envelop the living room in a single deep shade. “The most challenging aspect of the restoration was refinishing the original concrete floors. We stripped off the original polish that was cracked and peeling from years of use and dog traffic, opting for a matte finish instead. Matching the charcoal tone with three-foot squares scored into the surface was difficult,” she observes—but not so difficult that she couldn’t figure out a way. The end result is a sleight of hand that channels a large-format limestone. An Astrid stool by McGee & Co sits in the company of another circa-1950 stool by Tony Paul.

This time, Instagram predicted Anna’s future, pointing her to interior designer Whitney Romanoff of Fayetteville-based studio Meet West, whose work she had been following for a while. But as Anna recalls, finding an aesthetic wasn’t plain sailing. “It was the most chaotic brief ever, and Whitney was honestly a mind reader. I specifically remember her laughing at the number of French provincial and English country tear sheets I had pulled out,” she says. “After she helped distill my design references, the goal was to bring the house back to life using fabulous materials that the original architect would be proud of, while letting the original architecture shine.”

Whitney dreamed up the kitchen as a feminine jewel box, opting for an unlacquered brass and honed quartzite backsplash, a brass sink, brass bistro shelving, Melange Mini Monopoint lights from Visual Comfort, and nude-tone cabinetry. The concrete countertops are a labor of love by Anna’s boyfriend. An Insideast brass bridge faucet gives the space a gilt-edged glow. Fisher & Paykel’s French door refrigerator blends into the custom millwork by Daniel Smiley Carpentry.
“It’s one of my favorite spaces,” Anna says of the kitchen. “I honestly can’t believe how close to our rendering the real-life version is.” She admits that the space-starved layout was a worry at first. “It’s like living on a boat. Every square inch has to be thoughtfully considered and used. Whitney did such an amazing job dreaming up creative solutions.”

Whitney remembers her first visit to the house like it was yesterday. “Anna’s unassumingly chic, black-and-white photography collection and her spilling-over vintage wardrobe jumped out at me, and I knew then this project had potential for serious vibes,” she says. These vibes evidently involved a groovy playlist (think tracks by Charlotte Gainsbourg, the Velvet Underground, and Jenny Lewis) and a groovier storyline, which plays a larger role in Whitney’s design process. “We create a playlist and a [make-believe] storyline [in every project] as a way to stoke our team’s and our clients’ imaginations,” she explains. The storyline this time was inspired by Anna herself and the home’s LA-esque midcentury-modern architecture. “We imagined the space as a late 1960s hideaway for a French New Wave film icon decamping from Paris to Mulholland Drive,” she smiles.

The dining room is a page out of a romance novel, with vintage Aldo Jacober oak dining chairs, an extendable Delta dining table by Calligaris sourced via Lacuna Modern, and a floaty Maris pendant from Soho Home that glows overhead. The custom built-in sideboard with quartzite top and floating shelving elegantly displays Anna’s collection of art and fashion books.

But given that the home hadn’t been updated for decades—storage was lacking, the concrete floors were scratched and peeling, and many original details, like the wood-paneled walls, were hidden behind layers of white paint—Mulholland Drive (or anywhere near) was a total stretch. As Whitney further explains, undoing bits of the past helped set the stage for the future, making room for warm, feminine details and luxe materials to give each room a cinematic quality. “The result is a space that feels both found—as if the details added could have been there all along—and unique and personal to Anna’s aesthetic,” she adds.

The office basks in the afternoon afterglow, while veiling the dressing room beyond by way of Painterly Stripe linen drapery by Sarah Sherman Samuel from Lulu and Georgia. A vintage glass waterfall desk procured via 410 Vintage Market and a vintage armchair from Anna’s mother reupholstered in Manuel Canovas’s Titus Champagne fabric float atop an antique Persian rug. A 1960s Italian pendant light from Bonne Choice levitates overhead.
“We wanted to dial up the mood in the primary bedroom and add warmth, romance, femininity, and a touch of mystery,” says Whitney. Brass globe pendants from Vakkerlight masquerade as dangling earrings atop Arabescato marble side tables that gleam like jewels. The bed stays warm courtesy of custom lumbar pillows in Schumacher fabric and a New Zealand sheep skin from Forsyth Art, while creamy beige limewash acts as a warm backdrop for the large-scale photograph by Jin-Woo Prensena. The taper holder is from Hawkins New York.

Whitney dressed the home like she would a person, hanging bedside pendants as dangling earrings, haloing the bathrooms and office with vintage lighting to channel an elegant boudoir, and rouging the primary bathroom with a quartzite vanity with specks of blue and pink. For her, it couldn’t be a historic home without historic moments. And so the interior designer leaned into the past, bringing in rose tile in the kitchen as a hat-tip to the original pink tile, and Anna’s late grandmother’s Turkish rug in the living room, one that Anna had danced on as a child. Then she completed the interior with modern luxuries in the primary bathroom and kitchen, including a panel-ready refrigerator, soaking tub, and custom cabinetry.

In the primary bathroom, an oak plank wall lets in natural light and creates privacy for the toilet.
In the primary bathroom, an oak plank wall lets in natural light and creates privacy for the toilet.
The crown jewel of the primary bathroom is the Kohler Underscore soaking tub and shower, cocooned in earthy zellige tile from Zia Tile.

Out of all the spaces that got a second life, Anna cites the primary bathroom as her personal favorite. “It was a total gut job and feels like such a monumental transformation. Before the renovation I had a super shallow cast-iron tub that wasn’t insulated, and now I feel so luxurious in my deep bathtub,” she explains, noting that it’s made all the more special by the 1960s Helena Tynell bubble glass fixtures and the divider that casts shapeshifting shadows come mid-afternoon. “I can’t get enough of it,” she says, as much about the bathroom as the home itself. “It’s all so dreamy.”

The guest bathroom could well be from Paris in the 1960s. The fluted Viola marble sink and unlacquered brass faucet from Brassna cut a striking contrast to the oxblood zellige tile from Zia Tile, while glass flush-mount lights channel mirror-image wine glasses against custom brass-and-nickel-tinted Venetian plaster walls. A 1960s Helena Tynell fixture glows overhead. The art is by Candice Barry.

Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest

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