Designer Hillary Taylor Gave This Early 2000s Salt Lake City Home Buckets of Character by Looking to the Ceilings
Color, pattern and texture extend overhead in this richly layered home, where designer Hillary W. Taylor turned every surface into an opportunity for character
How do you give a relatively modern house the warmth and permanence of a much older one? For interior designer Hillary Taylor, the answer lies not in disguising its age, but in building character through architecture, color, and the possessions that already belong to the people who live there.
This 4,000-square-foot shingle-style home in Salt Lake City was built in the early 2000s, but its most noticeable feature was not its newness. The ceiling heights in the living and dining rooms bore little relationship to the width and depth of the spaces, leaving the rooms feeling more cavernous than generous. Acres of white drywall only amplified the imbalance.
Working with Jackson LeRoy Construction, Hillary redesigned the flooring, tile, plumbing, lighting, cabinetry, and millwork, personally drawing every new molding and mantel. ‘Our guiding principle was to add warmth by layering texture on the ceilings and walls, and to create floor plans with a human scale so sightlines stayed at eye level, rather than requiring neck-craning moments,’ she explains.
The owners’ references were colorful English houses and the lively eclecticism of New York’s Crosby Street Hotel, owned and designed by Kit Kemp. Yet Hillary was careful not to create a stage set. She retained the family’s art, piano, klismos chairs and dining chairs carved with their name, allowing the new work to grow around objects with meaning. ‘Anything that is authentic to the people who live in the home is never out of place,’ she says. ‘That consistency shows up, and you can’t fake it.’
Entry: Rather than treating the entry as a pass-through, Hillary layered it like a room, with a custom rug, Visual Comfort pendant and the owner’s blue-and-white ceramics. The doorway frames the darker walnut dining room beyond.
The home’s English-inflected exuberance begins in the entry. Gucci’s ‘Tian’ print wallcovering covers the entry in flowering branches, birds and butterflies, while a blue ceiling in Benjamin Moore’s ‘Glass Slipper’ turns the often overlooked fifth wall into part of the composition. A ‘White Dove’ trim contains the exuberance, and the client’s own wooden console lends the polished scheme something familiar.
The entry also establishes the palette that carries through the house: clear pale blues, botanical greens and flashes of deep red. Rather than assigning each room an isolated color scheme, Hillary repeated these shades in changing proportions to make the sightlines feel connected. Through the doorway, the pomegranate-red living room appears as an invitation rather than a shock.
‘The fifth wall is the charm-bringer,’ says Hillary of her decision to decorate the ceiling. ‘It really infuses personality and sets your space apart.’ The idea resurfaces throughout the house, from the raffia-clad dining room ceiling to the enveloping stripe in the primary bedroom.
Living room: An oversized Visual Comfort lantern gives the pitched ceiling a strong center, with custom shades in Pierre Frey’s ‘Augustine Bleuet’ carrying pattern into the room’s upper reaches. Ralph Lauren sconces and floor lamps keep the remaining light closer to eye level.
In the living room, Phillip Jeffries’ ‘Manila Hemp’ grasscloth takes the client’s favorite color around every wall. Its woven surface absorbs the light rather than reflecting it, making the lofty room feel warmer and more intimate. Striped taffeta curtains and a natural rug soften the edges further, while an existing piano and pair of klismos chairs keep the room grounded in family history.
The pattern mix is characteristically assured: a floral Claremont fabric covers the slipcovered settee; checks appear on the klismos chairs and round ottoman; and pillows introduce still more florals and decorative motifs. Hillary gives each one a job. ‘Every room needs a geometric – usually small – an anchor fabric like a floral, and then always a texture,’ she explains. ‘I also always use a stripe. It’s just a must. Even if it’s just a lampshade.’
A once-troublesome doorway shaped the furniture plan. Because the opening had casing on only one side, a previous sofa placement forced anyone entering the room to walk directly into it. Hillary cleared the route and turned the adjoining wall into a decorative passage, centering the fireplace and setting blue-and-white plates among the pale millwork. The collection brings dimension to the wall while guiding movement towards the breakfast room.
Dining room: A round table preserves circulation in the tall, narrow room. Kravet’s ‘Les Pecheurs’ cloth bridges the red accents and the owners’ refinished chairs, upholstered in dusk-blue Jamie Stern leather with Samuel & Sons piping.
The dining room required the most architectural sleight of hand. Its 23-foot ceiling and irregular angles made a room intended for intimate dinners feel tall and narrow. Hillary’s solution was to introduce a visual stopping point rather than physically lower the ceiling. Substantial walnut paneling wraps the walls, capped by an entablature that gives the eye a clear horizon.
Above it, neutral raffia covers the remaining wall and ceiling planes. The structural beam was boxed out and visually strengthened with additional boards, creating a framework overhead. ‘Voilà, no more drywall,’ Hillary exclaims. ‘This is how intimacy is established.’ A ‘Sarafina’ chandelier by Coleen & Company now hangs within this newly defined volume rather than disappearing into it.
Textiles bring the scale down another notch. Full linen curtains, a natural rug and custom serving tables skirted in zigzag linen add softness and improve the room’s acoustics. The skirts also conceal useful storage – a decorative counterpoint to the surrounding walnut. ‘The textiles are the yin to the walnut paneling yang,’ Hillary notes.
The family’s carved dining chairs were refinished and upholstered in dusky sky-blue leather, preserving their personal significance while drawing the home’s cooler color through the darker room. A richly patterned tablecloth adds the final layer, giving the formality of the paneling a more relaxed, convivial note.
Kitchen: The wide Roman shade turns the garden-facing window into a focal point without sacrificing daylight. Schumacher’s ‘Plaisirs de la Chine’ is finished with Fabricut’s ‘Munich’ tape, giving its relaxed folds a tailored blue edge.
From the darker dining room, the kitchen provides a crisp change of pace. Pale painted cabinetry and statuary stone counters keep the working surfaces bright, while polished-nickel hardware and Waterworks fittings add a cool gleam. Hudson Valley pendants, custom painted in Farrow & Ball’s ‘Lulworth Blue’, connect the room to the softer blues seen from the entry onwards.
Pattern is concentrated where it has the greatest effect. A Schumacher fabric at the window introduces color and narrative without competing with the cabinetry, while Palecek stools upholstered in a neat, checked fabric bring texture to the island. The living room’s deep red appears as a small note within the window treatment, an example of Hillary’s approach to continuity. ‘It’s enough to pull a thread from beginning to end,’ she says.
Pantry: Glazed doors lighten the tall banks of cabinetry while putting everyday china on display. Above the Waterworks sink, a Cowtan & Tout ‘Seraphina Glazed’ Roman shade, fabricated by Dennah Baxter, brings a softer botanical note to the symmetry.
The adjoining pantry is more saturated. Cabinetry and trim are painted entirely in ‘Lulworth Blue’ and paired with grasscloth walls, warm brass Armac Martin hardware, and a custom checked pendant shade. It is a hardworking room, fitted with additional refrigeration and ovens, but the full color treatment allows it to read almost as a large piece of furniture rather than an anonymous run of storage.
Breakfast room: Mixing a skirted settee with Holland MacRae chairs gives the breakfast table the ease of a sitting area. Overhead, custom shades in Nile & York’s ‘Plough Stripe’ repeat the room’s blues at a smaller scale.
Beyond the kitchen, the breakfast room has the ease of a garden room. A custom settee upholstered in Sister Parish’s ‘Burma’ fabric curves around the table, joined by slender dining chairs and curtains in a relaxed Schumacher stripe. The mix repeats Hillary’s preferred pattern formula on a smaller, lighter scale.
A Visual Comfort pendant hangs above the table, its custom shades covered in a blue-and-white stripe and finished with marine-blue piping. A woven pedestal and urn bring a more sculptural note. The result is informal but not incidental: a room positioned to catch daily family life while remaining visually connected to the kitchen and living spaces on either side.
Family room: The paneled walls and trim are painted Farrow & Ball’s ‘White Tie’, while Benjamin Moore’s ‘White Dove’ lifts the crown molding and ceiling. The subtle shift prevents the detailed architecture from flattening into a single expanse of white.
The family room sits just off the kitchen, but its original proportions made it surprisingly difficult to furnish. A chair rail positioned around 42 inches from the floor bisected the walls, while an overly tall mantel made them feel squat. Hillary replaced both with a more convincing architectural framework: poplar boards with fine shadow lines sit flush to the walls, and the chair rail now runs at 28 inches, allowing the upper panels to appear longer and better proportioned.
Bookcases flow into a newly designed limestone mantel, while matte ‘White Tie’ paint by Farrow & Ball unifies the millwork. Instead of forcing in a sofa that would interrupt the traffic pattern, Hillary arranged four generous swivel chairs around a central ottoman. Each seat has a nearby light and somewhere to place a drink.
‘Where I couldn’t fit a large sofa, I just didn’t,’ she says. ‘It doesn’t make sense to line a sofa up along a traffic pattern just to have one.’ The decision makes the room feel sociable from every direction, while blue ikat upholstery and tiger and toile pillows bring the color and pattern of the more formal rooms into this everyday gathering space.
Powder room: A custom tortoiseshell-finished mirror by Masterworks adds an amber note to the blue-and-white scheme. Yellow shades in Schumacher’s ‘Incomparable Moiré’ warm the light from Visual Comfort’s brass sconces.
The smaller transitional spaces take some of the house’s boldest decorative risks. In the powder room, Meg Braff’s ‘Imperial Palace’ wallcovering surrounds a polished metal sink base, while a trim in Sherwin-Williams’ ‘Loyal Blue’ intensifies its deep ground. Yellow moiré lampshades and a custom tortoiseshell-finished mirror add warm flashes against the blue.
Mudroom: Carrying Farrow & Ball’s ‘Lulworth Blue’ onto the ceiling turns the narrow mudroom into a complete color envelope and gives the white Oomph lantern greater definition. Below, high-gloss doors echo the checkerboard floor.
The mudroom returns to ‘Lulworth Blue’ across the trim and millwork, offset by glossy black doors and Lee Jofa’s ‘Whitaker’ wallpaper. A black-and-white floor from Paris Ceramics gives the practical passage graphic definition. These compact rooms demonstrate Hillary’s advice for imperfect or heavily trafficked spaces: color, pattern and texture can do as much corrective work as construction, while giving utilitarian areas an identity of their own.
Bedroom: Farrow & Ball’s ‘Tented Stripe’ follows every change in pitch across the vaulted ceiling, turning its complex geometry into a decorative feature. The slim black frame of Oly Studio’s ‘Marco’ bed provides a crisp counterpoint without interrupting the pattern.
Upstairs, the primary bedroom turns an angular gabled ceiling into its defining feature. Farrow & Ball’s pale blue-and-ivory ‘Tented Stripe’ follows the walls and slopes overhead, making the irregular architecture feel intentional and cocooning rather than visually fragmented.
‘I felt that a tone-on-tone stripe would bring the eye up and pull the drywall in so that the room felt cozy,’ Hillary explains. ‘It’s funny to call a stripe cozy, but when it’s everywhere, it can really disguise and obscure strange ceiling arrangements.’ The continuous pattern also draws attention towards the windows and the strong outline of an Oly Studio bed, which gives the room a natural center.
The scheme becomes richer at eye level. Oyster-colored curtains are edged in velvet tape, while checked chairs, a pale settee and a custom kidney-shaped vanity in Pierre Frey fabric layer shape and pattern without disturbing the room’s calm. The vanity skirt, finished with decorative trim and tassel fringe, balances the more architectural silhouette of the bed.
Bathroom: The fifth-wall idea shifts from paper to stone here, with marble continuing across the shower ceiling to make the enclosure read as one volume. Underfoot, honed Calacatta Oro is laid in a diagonal parquet pattern with polished Thassos accents.
The adjoining bathroom takes a quieter approach, using the room’s quirks to improve its function. Hillary widened the space and converted knee walls and irregular ceiling areas into custom storage, then introduced mirrored paneling to bounce natural light through the pale interior.
‘White Dove’ painted cabinetry and polished-nickel fittings sit against an intricate mix of Calacatta Oro, Thassos and Calacatta Lincoln marble. The floor is laid in a diagonal parquet pattern, while the shower uses shifts in finish and scale – including a New Ravenna mosaic underfoot – to give the near-monochrome room depth.
The restraint offers a pause after the primary bedroom’s enveloping stripe, yet the attention to junctions, framing and material remains the same. Throughout the house, Hillary’s architecture gives the decoration somewhere convincing to land. ‘The shell is always so important to holding textiles and furnishings,’ she says.
Although the project transformed almost every surface, its most persuasive quality is that it does not appear to have been conceived all at once. Existing furniture and art sit alongside newly drawn millwork, tailored upholstery and fabrics ranging from checks and stripes to florals and ikats. Each room has its own atmosphere, but the recurring reds, pale blues and natural textures maintain a clear visual thread.
For Hillary, this is the distinction between layering and clutter. She considers what is seen first, how a person enters and whether every piece has sufficient space around it. ‘Not too many skirts nor too many legs – each piece should speak to another,’ she says. The finished home feels colorful, composed and deeply personal: not an imitation of an old English house, but a Salt Lake City home given the substance to build a history of its own.
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