Lauren Battistini

I have a wonderful client. She and her husband bought a beautiful property in Houston in a very high-end area. Their backyard, essentially, it’s a preserve. It’s full of greenery, but the home itself is a three-level home, and they have had so many renovations to make. And they hired me not at the beginning of the process, but more in the middle of the process where some of the color decisions had already been made.

And so, were these the color decisions that I would have made? No. However, my clients have a very specific vision of what they want to do. So this put me in a position and an interesting, but good position to work around the elements that they had already chosen, elements that did not necessarily mesh very well. To give you an example, some of the kitchen areas were kind of a mauvey pink, yet the woodwork in the whole home, which they wanted to preserve, is an orange-toned wood.

Those colors don’t really tend to play well together, but this particular client, this couple, they’re very eclectic in their taste and they wanted it to look that way. So I have picked out several colors of all types of surfaces and finishes and paints and fabrics for this home, and it’s a hodgepodge of a lot of different color palettes, a lot of different elements that I basically had to go in and sort of make them work.

The project is still in process, so I don’t have any finished photos, but it’s by far the most interesting project I’ve ever worked on. And they’re wonderful clients. They just are doing a lot of different things in the space, and it’s just a lot of different elements going on. It’s funny when I work with couples, the husband and wife don’t always agree on everything, so I’m having to help draw consensus on some of the color materials and finishes decisions. So, to say the least, it’s been the most interesting project I’ve worked on, and the couple is lovely. It’s been a funky project in a good way.