5 Clever Ways to Modernize a Dated Home with Pattern

My name's David Netto, and we're in a beach house

that I recently designed on Long Island

which was published in Architectural Digest.

And I wanna take you on a tour of this beach house

and talk about the role of pattern.

One of the things you can do to make a very grown-up house

feel younger is to do very playful sort of

overscaled and naive patterns.

Anybody who would put this in the front of the house is

ready to have a good time.

The ceilings in the house were a problem

because they were either wildly high, like the living room

and the kitchen, or they were too low.

For instance, where we are, I thought, how would I

make this interesting when the ceiling is

lower than you wish it was?

And the solution, since I couldn't have architecture

boards or something like that was to put this wallpaper up.

It gets your mind off the fact that the ceiling is low

because all you can see is that the ceiling is interesting.

The runner that I'm walking on on these stairs

is a linear pattern, and it looks pretty

and it is, but the reason I chose a linear pattern

is because I wanted to pick up that horizon line

outside of the ocean that you see

through every window upstairs.

I love this pattern because it's very sophisticated

American Revolutionary War scenes, but it's in

happy colors that are perfect for a child's room.

This is a customized map of Long Island that was

painted with lots of family anecdotes in it

of the owner's lives out here.

And the closer you get, the naughty stuff

you'll recognize about people they know,

people they know will be guests here,

and it's very funny and very personal

but you can't get too close because a lot

of that stuff is secret and I don't want you

to know all of it.

(upbeat organ music)