Connecticut has lengthy held a particular spot in Jae Joo’s coronary heart. “It’s the place I went to school, met my husband, acquired married, and had my first house,” says the inside designer. It’s additionally, she notes, the place she’s spent “numerous hours antiquing and searching for one of the best flea markets round.”

The classic furnishings procuring within the state proved significantly interesting for Joo, whose design observe grew largely out of her penchant for amassing vintage and artisanal objects. (She laughingly admits to some hoarder tendencies.) In its six years, her eponymous Manhattan-based studio has develop into recognized for the best way she mixes modern decor with decades- and centuries-old objects to create layered, low-key, and character-rich areas crammed with heat and patina.

And so when she observed a late-midcentury home on the market not removed from one in all her shopper’s houses in a wooded enclave of southwest Connecticut’s Fairfield County, about an hour’s drive from her workplaces in Tribeca, her curiosity was piqued.

“It’s in a city that basically appears like a forest, and the house had [the look] of being actually enjoyable. It felt like a celebration home,” she says of its Seventies leanings. On the similar time, the abode appeared very low upkeep and—due to the largely open-plan floor flooring, vaulted wooden ceilings, and tree-filled views—it had heat and luxury too.

Joo and her husband, Devin, thought it perfect for the gatherings of family and friends that they envisioned internet hosting. “We didn’t wish to fear about stuff getting tousled,” she emphasizes. What’s extra, the house additionally efficiently brings a way of the outside in, whereas incorporating her numerous vintage and artisan finds. In different phrases, it “is all the things I like, all put collectively”—which is, after all, precisely what one’s residence needs to be.

If there’s a room Joo likes greater than another, it’s the kitchen. “I cook dinner, and my favourite factor is to have individuals over,” says the designer, who needed to make sure that friends may occupy the house along with her. That meant she wanted it to be as welcoming as potential: “Someplace individuals may chill out, that wouldn’t really feel too purposeful—an area you could possibly grasp in.”

The prevailing kitchen was one thing of a clean field, so she began from scratch, including components to heat issues up, generally actually (like the large Ilve range). All through the house, plastered partitions, all-wood Shaker-style cabinetry, and crown molding painted in Hardwick White and Shadow White, each from Farrow & Ball, had been added, together with tons of classic items. The four-legged counter stools and Moroccan carpets, which flank the huge customized oak island, recall previous nation kitchens.

Whereas these nods to conventional design may sound like they’d be at odds with the home’s fashionable structure, Joo didn’t see that as an issue. “I at all times love distinction…one thing so modern and one thing so conventional working collectively.”

That something-old, something-new combine could be seen all through the home, and now and again even inside a single piece of furnishings. In the lounge, for instance, newly added classic brass legs and a glass prime turned an early-Twentieth-century watercolor-painted Chinese language display right into a espresso desk that nestles into the clean-lined, low-slung customized nook couch she designed. And, within the eating room, an RH desk, large enough to seat fourteen individuals, anchors an assortment of mismatched classic chairs. “I’ve been holding on to them for some time,” Joo says of some significantly particular Nineteenth-century Chinese language chairs. “I’ve by no means been ready to make use of them as a result of I didn’t have sufficient. Now was the right time.”

Outfitting this home additionally proved to be the best alternative for Joo to indulge her love of playful coloration—one thing her shoppers don’t at all times share. Working example? Los Angeles–based mostly painter Skylar Hughes. “He was right here for 2 weeks, mountain climbing round, taking within the pure environment, and getting actually impressed by them,” Joo fondly remembers. He then created the abstracted forest scene that enlivens the extra child-friendly of the visitor bedrooms, echoing and adorning the sylvan view outdoors. Ending the house are hand-thrown organically formed ceramic pots by Joo’s pal Jenny Min, which sit on the headboard of the customized red-lacquered mattress. (Different Min vessels adorn the kitchen, main lavatory, eating room, and dressing room.)

“I needed this home to only really feel actually lived in, actually snug, and to be family-oriented,” says Joo. “Numerous the time, my initiatives are very linear, very curated. However my very own type is extra relaxed.”