Expert Advice: How to Achieve a Low-Key Luxe Look at Home - Remodelista
Richard Ostell is a British-born, NYC-based designer with impeccable taste. I love technology and am constantly curious, I just feel we have lost a sense of tranquility in our lives and our homes can be that place.” Here are 10 principles that Ostell lives (and works) by. For a West Village townhouse, Richard mixed luxe elements (custom Belgian-linen-covered sofas from Dmitriy & Co.) with casual notes: an artwork nonchalantly pinned to wall. There is a fabulous TED talk by my old boss, Angela Ahrendts, former CEO of Burberry and the now the head of Apple’s retail business, in which she talks about human intelligence, of going with your instincts. A vase by ceramicist Matthias Kaiser is placed on a rough-hewn wooden shelf. The happy relationship or tension between objects, textures, and space is what I am striving for in all my work be it furniture or interiors. Richard creates a simple palette in natural tones by mixing linen, wood, and weathered brick. This quote from Leonard Koren’s book Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers sums up my ideas very well. Usually this implies a limited palette of materials. In a West Village townhouse with en suite bedroom and bath, worn wood floors are juxtaposed with a Briona Pendant designed by Adolf Loos in 1914. When I talk about humble materials I also mean honest, natural materials: wood, stone, plaster, cotton, linen, etc. Scuffs and marks on a dining table are a history of all the meals you have shared there. Richard’s white oak dining table and benches are his own design. Stick with a natural palette.Natural colors and restraint go together in my mind. A parade of pebbles displayed on a table. But don’t do it for the sake of decoration; everything in your home should have meaning and be personal.