This Memphis Home Is the Picture of Eternal Spring

Vaishnavi Nayel Talawadekar
·7 min read

Anyone who knows David Quarles, whether in person or through his brilliantly bohemian Instagram account, will tell you that the Memphis-based interior designer loves living his life in technicolor. “I’m a synesthete,” David says of his preternatural talent. “I see sound and hear color.” Which is why, when he meets clients for the very first time, the first thing he does is ask them their favorite songs. “It comes in especially handy when they can’t express how they want their space to feel or look. When I hear their playlist, the colors come swimming to me like I’ve known them all along,” he adds—even if the songs in said playlist are in French. Exhibit A: his latest project, a charming apartment in Central Gardens, Memphis, where his brain bested Google Translate to turn a patriotic ballad by French singer Édith Piaf into the perfect color-happy aesthetic.

A sky blue bench from Lulu and Georgia breathes easy in the foyer, providing a landing spot on the way in or out. The coat tree is a West Elm find. A painting by a local artist graces the wall.
David (left) and in-house designer and project manager Jurnee Kelley in the colorful Memphis home.
David (left) and in-house designer and project manager Jurnee Kelley in the colorful Memphis home.

For owner Brooke Ward Mills, an operations manager in the nonprofit sector and a self-admitted Francophile, the home marked a new beginning in more ways than one. Having experienced some difficult life chapters, she saw this as her chance to write her next one—or as David puts it, “a chance to create a place where she could put all of her personality out there.” Although the designer asserts that his client has “a divine sense of style,” it turned out she had no idea where to start.

A cocktail table with a marble top from HomeGoods basks in the afternoon afterglow. As for the disco ball, “it’s my signature,” deadpans David. “I always leave a little disco ball in all the homes I design. My clients are always like, ‘So where are you going to leave it?’ And I say, ‘You’ll find it.’ It’s a way to continue interacting with my clients long after the project is over.”
A delicate wooden cocktail table from HomeGoods serves as a bookend to the console. By the landing hangs a life-size painting, an ode to the owner’s late dog Beatrice, by Frances Berry Moreno.

Lucky for her, David did. From his POV, a good place to start anew was through color. “We mainly started looking at her wardrobe and found that she had touches of olive green across her outfits, that really spoke to me,” explains the designer, who also owns a jewelry line and moonlights as a Zumba instructor. David gave the color pride of place on the dining room ceiling and living room molding, keeping the walls plain in the living room to keep the spotlight on Brooke’s groovy art collection. The green-on-green touch was a little hat-tip to the neighborhood, amongst Memphis’s lushest, whose spirit David was also keen to echo indoors. “It can get pretty dark and gloomy here in the winters, so I wanted to preserve the sunshine and all that came with it,” he adds. “I imagined eternal spring within these four walls.” Speaking of opposites, David also conjured up another across the interior, keeping it equal parts masculine and feminine. “Brooke proceeded with caution upon initially meeting us, but once we passed her vibe check, she softened a bit, letting us get to know a different side of her,” he says.

Even before David took up the design reins, Brooke had had the kitchen outfitted with cookie-cutter IKEA cabinetry. “The kitchen lacked the touches of her true personality,” David observes. His first order of affairs was bringing in a zellige tile backsplash and a pink-veined quartzite counter to soften the spartan scheme. He haloed the latter with gilt-edged Mitzi pendants to add a touch of sparkle.
If a café and an art gallery had a lovechild, it would look something like this dining room. David kept the ceiling green and the walls white to keep the spotlight on the art, which includes a canvas by Frances Berry Moreno (center) and pop art prints from Moon Rabbit Press. A Perigold table holding flowers from TCBnCO takes center stage. It is surrounded by floral-upholstered Anthropologie chairs and underpinned by a paw-friendly Ruggable rug that remains immune to the antics of Brooke’s cats and dogs. A Jax chandelier crowns the setting.

In collaboration with Jurnee Kelley and contracting firm the Pros Contracting, the team was a united front when it came to channeling Brooke’s personality with pink floral upholstery in the dining room, a floaty blue bench in the foyer, and delicate cocktail tables here and there. Ask David which side was easier to bring to life and he doesn’t need time to think. “The playful side. It was definitely a fun challenge to figure out where to put her Lego typewriter and her Harry Potter art prints.”

A rattan chair that belonged to the owner’s late husband occupies one corner of the living room. David swapped out the original yellow cushion for a green one to match the ceiling and trim.
A rattan chair that belonged to the owner’s late husband occupies one corner of the living room. David swapped out the original yellow cushion for a green one to match the ceiling and trim.

If it weren’t for her late husband’s rattan chair sitting resplendently in one corner of the living room, you might think that Brooke’s house was meant to be shiny and new. “Rather, it’s a reflection of new life and a celebration of old ones.” Next on the pair’s to-do list: the closet. Except this time, David will be paying attention to more than just the clothes inside.

The Lucille wallpaper in the powder room, which David designed with Chasing Paper, holds special significance for him. “It’s named after my grandmother and depicts a ponderosa pine. The little nodes indicate the growth of the tree and represent how beautifully my grandmother aged. She had 20 children, so there are 20 nodes,” he says of the Art Nouveau design. He brought in some whimsy with a Serpentine towel ring from Anthropologie, befitting its Potterhead owner. The mirror is also by the same brand.
A boutique hotel—that’s how the owner imagined the primary bedroom. In David’s eyes, there was no better way to achieve this than by leaning dark. He created a half-moon alcove behind the bed and emblazoned it with Ruth’s Garden wallpaper from his collection with Chasing Paper. “It’s named after my other grandmother. She loved flowers and would always give people a bunch when they visited her,” he reminisces. He outfitted the alcove with hidden switches and USB ports, “so once she’s in bed, she doesn’t have to get out.” The West Elm nightstands echo the brooding vibe. The gilded lights and area rug are both Anthropologie designs.
David imagined the primary bathroom as an Elysian field. “I could picture myself running gleefully, with soft grass beneath my feet and a cloud-dappled sky above,” he recounts. That little daydream led to a tricolored bathroom with blue, white, and green wall tile and a shimmering penny-tiled floor. The vanity is from Rejuvenation, and the mirror and lighting are Etsy finds.
“The thing about Brooke is that she loves quirky things but she also loves taking time out for herself and doing her makeup, so we had to figure out how to bring in a makeup vanity somewhere,” says David. He knocked down an unused closet in the primary bathroom and one wall in the primary bathroom to reposition the shower and make room for a makeup vanity. He enlisted Dustin Adkins of Adkins Woodworking for the latter and gingered up the setup with Visual Comfort lights and a mirrored medicine cabinet with builtin storage. The ceiling wears a Mitchell Black wallpaper.
“We wanted to make the guest bedroom feel playful but not childish,” says David. Jurnee took the reins in this space. She enveloped the room in Rhythmic Blue by Sherwin-Williams and anchored it with a bed and Clementine headboard from Lulu and Georgia. As for the nightstands, “they aren’t nightstands at all, but bookcases that pull double duty,” David shares of the CB2 designs. A trifecta of Mitzi lights add a whimsical touch.
“The idea for the guest bathroom came from another garment from Brooke’s wardrobe—one with green and white stripes,” says David, whose firm used the same color combination for the wall tiles, while muting the ceiling with a monochrome wallpaper by Mitchell Black.

Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest

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