Inside a Colonial-Style New York Home With British and Scandi Inspirations

Andrew Sessa
·8 min read

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For interior designer Keren Richter, this project is personal. The 20-year-old Colonial-style three-bedroom isn’t her own home, but it does sit just a few minutes from her family’s weekend place in the pastoral heart of New York’s Westchester County.

Richter, cofounder of AD PRO Directory firm White Arrow, along with her husband, Thomas, would often stop in for site visits on the way to or from her house, her two young kids in tow. After spending two years of the pandemic living in the area full time, “I feel very connected to this commission,” the designer says.

The project proved personal for another reason, too. From the outset, the home’s owners gave Richter “a lot of freedom, which is unusual,” she recalls. An empty-nester couple moving from Westchester’s more suburban stretches, the clients saw this house as their next-chapter forever home, but they also allowed the designer to take the lead.

“We’re often working to marry a disparate array of influences,” Richter says, explaining that here that meant leaning into both the owner’s traditional aesthetic and the early-American influences of their white-clapboard house, designed in 2005 by Crisp Architects. She then wedded that to a collected look that combines some of the color and pattern both of British country houses and of mid-20th-century Swedish interiors.

For the living room, Richter commissioned a graphic custom rug from Nordic Knots, placing atop it a pair of Claremont fabric–covered custom sofas whose look she borrowed from pieces by the Swedish-modern designer Axel Einar Hjorth and from some British examples. To this she added a vintage coffee table, Hollywood at Home console, and pillows in textiles from Bennison Fabrics and Pierre Frey, among others.

Shop out the look of the house here ⤵

A custom Roger + Chris sectional and a dramatic, multiarmed Brendan Ravenhill chandelier define the casual but sophisticated sisal-carpeted family room. Roman shades in a block-printed Namay Samay fabric filter light from the windows, while fabrics in similar hues but bolder patterns cover the throw pillows on the couch.

Richter also wanted the rooms here to feel fun and playful and to connect to the ample surrounding acreage: “I love the nature of this area,” she continues, noting that the house has “such amazing light and so many windows.”

A former painter and commercial illustrator, Richter considers her interiors an extension of her art practice. “I often think of the homes I design as a collage of color and pattern and style.” Before she got around to composing that collage here, however, she hit upon some key insights that allowed her to improve her canvas. Changing the house’s plan and program to improve its flow, she turned a secondary entry into a combined mudroom, laundry area, and pantry, “so you can get into the house, take off coats and shoes, and put your back-of-house things away.”

Richter reimagined the kitchen island—while leaving most of the space as it was—to better accommodate the Lostine counter stools that now provide seating at it. New lighting from Urban Electric keeps things bright after the sun sets.
A floral Svenskt Tenn wallpaper wraps the formal dining room, where chairs upholstered in a Rogers and Goffigon cotton ticking stripe surround a custom oval trestle table made of solid white oak. The light above is from Vaughan Design, and the jute rug is from Momeni.

The shape of the kitchen island then morphed to better accommodate seating, and the home office moved from the downstairs primary suite to a more private lounge-like area upstairs, where a salvaged set of arching Victorian-era doors and traditional custom millwork make the space “seem like it was always there.” That primary suite, meanwhile, got a new dressing room that “feels like a dream” and a reimagined bathroom that’s become one of the owner’s favorite spots in the house.

As for the interiors’ aesthetic collage, Richter pieced it all together into a cohesive, highly personal whole using a wealth of elements that all felt tied to her British and Scandi inspirations, tending towards playful moments of color and pattern. She set these amid a largely cream-colored architectural envelope. Throughout, she brought in antique and vintage pieces too, “to make it feel collected and grounded,” she notes, while also leaning into contemporary designs.

When you move through the home’s rooms, Richter says, “each has its own feel—the library is a really cozy space rooted in the fireplace, the living room is more light-filled, surrounded by glass and nature. I want these spaces to take you on a journey of discovery.”

“I think the library turned out really wonderfully. There’s such a richness of color, and a mix of vintage and contemporary,” says Richter. A forest mural wallpaper by Papier and curtains made of a subtle Holland & Sherry plaid envelop a pair of Hollywood at Home roll-arm chairs, a Devol hand-painted cupboard and a cocktail table from the owners’ collection. The carpet is a 1920s Chinese Art Deco antique from Reza’s Rug Gallery.
Newly moved upstairs from its former position as part of the primary suite, the home office offers temptingly comfortable seating in a reupholstered vintage Danish modern loveseat from JenMod. It relaxes behind a Portuguese marble and polished brass coffee table by Richy Almond and Pernille Lind.

The new primary bathroom alone—with its John Derian French Empire–inspired chandelier, Victoria and Albert soaking tub, Venetian mirrors, and riotously black-, white-, and purple-veined Breccia Capraia marble shower—takes you on a journey all on its own.

“It’s the most glamorous bathroom I’ve ever designed,” Richter enthuses. “And the client says she’s now forever ruined any time she stays in a hotel—‘Nothing can compete with my bathroom!’” Richter’s playful, personal rejoinder? “Glad I’ve ruined you!”

Designed by Millbrook, New York’s Crisp Architects, the home’s white-clapboard exterior, gabled roofs, and intimate scale channel the best of early-American, classic Colonial design—even though the building is only 20 years old. “It’s very well built,” says Richter, who wanted her new interiors “to seamlessly integrate with what Crisp had designed, to feel cohesive.”
The breakfast room reads as one of the more traditional spaces in the house, thanks to classically inspired contemporary furnishings: a scallop-edge pedestal table by Jan Showers, a hand-blown bell-shaped glass pendant light by Sophie Lou Jacobsen, and high-backed rush chairs from Redford House. The artwork is by Eero Snellman.
The blue Crown flushmount adds a pop of color to the serene laundry room. The window treatments are custom using Serena Dugan fabric.
The double-height primary bedroom centers on a custom, Shaker-style four-poster flanked by bespoke nightstands from English Farmhouse. The bench at the foot of the bed is from Nickey Kehoe.
A Victoria + Albert soaking tub with Waterworks fixtures claims the spotlight in a windowed alcove of the primary bath, enjoying privacy thanks to sweet cafe curtains. The flushmount above is from Visual Comfort.
A shower clad in Breccia Capraia marble pulls the eye through the newly conceived primary bathroom. The custom vanity sits on herringbone marble floors beneath a pair of Venetian mirrors (not pictured).
A shower clad in Breccia Capraia marble pulls the eye through the newly conceived primary bathroom. The custom vanity sits on herringbone marble floors beneath a pair of Venetian mirrors (not pictured).
In another guest bedroom, a Momeni rug lays the groundwork for another traditional Redford House bed, farmhouse-style nightstands from Maine Cottage and Oka table lamps that look like they’re made of antique blue-and-white Chinese porcelain ginger jars.
In one of the home’s two guest bedrooms, Soho Home lamps with custom shades in a Morris Textiles print top Redford House nightstands next to a Swedish Gustavian–inspired bed from the same company. Overhead hangs a vintage 1920s pendant lamp sourced on 1stDibs, while underfoot is a Loloi rug. The piece over the headboard is by an unknown artist.
Another 1940s Josef Frank Svenskt Tenn wallpaper, this one a clover pattern, elevates the powder room, where Waterworks fixtures serve a porcelain pedestal sink that’s classic in its simplicity. The vase atop it is Upsala-Ekeby.

Shop it out:

Lostine Gordon Stools

$585.00, Lostine

Crown by The Urban Electric Co.

$2176.00, The Urban Electric Co.

Nara - Blush Block Print by Serena Dugan Studio

$160.00, Serena Dugan Studio

Fazzo Pendant by Sophie Lou Jacobsen for In Common With

$3250.00, The Future Perfect

Cavendish Stoneware Mixing Bowls (Set of 3)

$80.00, The Vermont Country Store

Nickey Kehoe Large Cruet

$75.00, Nickey Kehoe

De Jong & Co Salt and Pepper Mills

$130.00, Good Friend

Alcott Hill Metal Tabletop Candlestick

$43.00, Wayfair

Vaughan Montferrat Leaf Chandelier

$.00, Vaughan

Hollywood at Home by Peter Dunham Holden Console Table

$6750.00, Hollywood at Home

Pottery Barn Montrose Terracotta Vase

$179.00, Pottery Barn

Soho Home Camille Table Lamp

$450.00, Soho Home

Nickey Kehoe Tufted Bench

$3000.00, Nickey Kehoe

Kraakware Ceramic Table Lamp Base

€275.00, Oka

Boll & Branch Dream Robe

$149.00, Boll & Branch

Rifle Paper Co. × Loloi Rose Garden Rug

$.00, Loloi

Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest

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