Windsor Smith: Blending Glamorous Style with the Romance of History

 



photo:housebeautiful.com

Her style seems to be English Drawing Room and L.A. Glam.  Like so many amazing Interior Designers, her own home is a sight to behold.

Windsor Smith is a lover of treasures, traditions and architecture of the past, she has expanded from collector to one of the leading talents in the interior design and restoration of some of the finest estates in Brentwood, Bel Air and Beverly Hills.



 

 

Here, the ever glamorous Smith poses welcomingly at the chic font doors of her home.  Notice the details like bronze escutcheons on the corners and glossy midnight hued paint.  Chic, glamorous and with an elegant European aire. 

 

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Past the front doors, you enter this Edwardian

Foyer.  Smith herself calls this her David Adler Foyer.

 

 

-Graphic marble and Limestone floor

-Silk Upolstered entry settee

-Zinc shelves with X detail

-Ferns

-Vintage Venetian Lantern,Venetian mirror, and mercury globe add miles of sparkle 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's elegant, refined and glamorous for sure.



 

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 My absolute favorite part of Windsor Smith's home is her Kitchen.  I can't even just call it my favorite- I am Obsessed!  My copy of House Beautiful, which features her home, has been looked through obsessively for many years.  Again, so much sparkle and understated glamour. 
-White, Slipcovered Wing Chairs
-2 Professional Thermador Stoves
-Dining table in the Kitchen
-Black Drum Shades
-French Doors and Windows
-Shelves filled with Hotel Silver
-Hexagonal Thasos Marble Tile

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I love the combination of Industrial resturant-style kitchen with Elegant English Library.   If you look at Windsor Smith's work, you can see that she successfully pulls off this kitchen look again and again.

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Does anyone see the consistencies within her look?  There are the dining table in the kitchen, slipcovered wing chairs, marble, graphic floors, dark glossy paint and french doors.... 

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Here is a vingette from her bathroom.  Glamorous, elegant, European.  I feel like a broken record, but Windsor Smith's rooms are not. While her style is consistent, I never get tired of looking at it.  Love the orange from the vintage fashion photograph repeated in the hermes boxes and even in the cashmere blanket draped on the (Italian?) chair through the doorway.  
As Ilearned from her website, "Windsor loves creating timeless homes for her clients who share her love for classic detail... crown moldings, wainscotings, and cabinets that are crafted more like furniture. She uses old bricks with "weepy" mortar to surround fireplaces and creates clerestories to splash light into ordinary hallways. She once showed up at the glassmaker to ensure that the leaded windows on one of her projects "wobbled" as they would have in the past. "It is rumored that I come in at night and engrave my initials on every nail head of my projects. But it's not true: I am up thumbing through out-of-print architecture books or reading about our legendary women of style... Elsie De Wolfe, Slim Keith, Babe Paley... I draw inspiration from the armchairs they are reclining on, in their country homes. My eye travels to the crystal girandoles on the mantel they are leaning against, or the moss-covered garden statuary their horse is riding past." said Smith.


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She fearlessly uses black walls and even black upolstery, which we all know I love!  I would paint an entire house black if  I could find someone to let me!  And I LOVE the blue ping pong table, it is a graphic note in an elegant black room, which is directly off the Edwardian Foyer. 

"I like to create libraries where men with names like Howard, Bing and Spencer sat in cashmere sweaters and contemplated the 13th hole on the Bel Air golf course. I am drawn to a simple but elegant time when the women were so legendary that surnames weren't necessary.... Slim, Babe, Coco...", Smith says as she twists a sterling pen on the palest aqua velvet ribbon that once belonged to the Duchess of Windsor. "I'm so fortunate. Imagine... a career that beckons me to blend architecture and style with the romance of history.... I can't think of anything more delicious."

Are you inspired by the rooms of Windsor Smith, and want to figure out how you can recreate her look in your own home?  Go to http://www.designtheroomyoulove.com to begin learning to create the home of your dreams on any budget.