A Perfectly Personal Cottage
When Brandi Herrera, of A Lively Manner, started designing her dream cottage, she looked no further than her family history for design inspiration. She was generous enough to share with us what went into creating her meaningful home - thank you, Brandi!
Photo via Getty Images
Brandi was born in Portland, but her husband, who was born in Omaha, grew up going to the horse races with his father, so they knew we wanted to nod to that history in some tiny way in the cottage. This led her down the rabbit hole of vintage horse racing history, which then led her to English racing and the Royal Ascot. That is how she discovered the above photo of Ken and Ross Calder which became a large part of her cottage design inspiration.
Before and after of the cottage exterior
Tell us about your design inspiration? "It was that photo, as well as my own family history (incorporating my mother's Swiss-German heritage), along with my husband's horse racing lineage, and our personal love of late '60s and early '70s design. Somehow, we managed to meld all of this with European cottage aesthetics. A fun challenge, for sure."
Describe the color scheme of your home? "The color scheme for this project is double complementary: red-orange + blue-green / orange-yellow + blue-violet, which offers the visual interest and dynamic energy that occurs when pairing two sets of complementary colors together. And yet, it also offers the flexibility to dial the scheme up or down to create lively or calming palettes in different rooms, based on the varying moods I was hoping to achieve."
How did you think about color for the bedroom? "While the palette for the bedroom does include all four color variations in varying degrees, green, white, and blue are the dominant hues (they take up the most visual real estate by way of the wallpaper, plus the other three white walls and ceiling). This creates a much more soothing and rejuvenating atmosphere, suitable for rest in the evenings and napping in the afternoons. It also makes the room feel more expansive. It's a tiny bedroom! We could barely squeeze a Queen bed in. Using a wallpaper like Cascade Meadow in Juniper visually makes the wall behind the bed recede, and feel a bit further away. It's a trick of the eye that cooler colors like blue and green are great at pulling off, especially in a mid tone. Whereas colors like red, orange, and yellow in their deeper, more saturated states make a room feel smaller, and objects appear closer than they actually are."
Why did you choose this wallpaper? "I chose the Cascade Meadow paper (above and beyond its beautiful juniper green and cornflower blue), for the pattern. It has just the right blend of cottage whimsy and mid century modern sensibility. It's charming, but not fussy. Stylized, but not cold. Perfect!"
What does it add to the space? "Cascade Meadow brings back memories of staying with my mom's parents as a child every summer on their farm in Minnesota. I always slept in what my grandmother called the Twin Bedroom, which was painted a pale blue-green. There were white cotton eyelet cafe curtains on the windows, and shelves overflowing with books. Every morning, the breeze would filter through the windows and make the curtains flutter. You could hear the morning doves cooing outside in the trees. That feeling of complete peace, comfort, and hominess ... that's the same feeling this wallpaper creates for me in our cottage."
