[dropcap]Glamour[/dropcap] assumes a new personality at a home in north Edmond featuring the interior design talents of Christy Howell, owner of Bella Vici, an upscale firm in Oklahoma City’s Deep Deuce area.
When completed in October, the home became the centerpiece of the annual Street of Dreams Home Tour, sponsored by the Central Oklahoma Home Builders Association in Edmond. Christy came to the project while it was under construction by Authentic Custom Homes. With no real homeowner to satisfy, Christy could create interiors for a home that she envisioned an upscale family would enjoy. For her, the finished home was the “silver lining” to an unusual project.
She was hired to create the interior design color scheme for the home, but the project provided many more construction challenges and opportunities to show her talents. Majoring in interior design at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond, she graduated in 2005. Five years later, she established Bella Vici.
This was also the first home that the builder created at this higher-income level, she notes.
“I had to assure him it was OK to be more upscale,” says Christy, who wanted to push the budget envelope to achieve her design goals with the project. “Designing the interiors was both challenging and very rewarding.”
Christy calls the style of the two-story, 6,000-square-foot home “a modern farmhouse design,” minus the traditional cows or chickens typical of most farmhouse settings. It is upscale, in appearance and function, and features numerous cutting-edge design ideas.
The home has many unusual features, found in the construction details, choice of custom-designed industrial hardware from England used in the kitchen, game room, master bath and lighting fixtures throughout the home. Every room has some element that could easily be called “a conversation piece.”
A visual feast can be enjoyed in the variety of textures used throughout the home. That design characteristic is seen in velvet headboards, quartz sinks, stainless steel holders for wine bottles, metallic paints, textured walls and wallpaper that has a flowing marbled effect.
“I like to use at least three to four textures and patterns in a room,” Christy says.
Throughout the home, the floors are a light white-washed engineered wood with a subtle hint of gray.
While each room has a distinct design personality, there is a sense of continuity in the color palette of whites, grays and touches of black that give the home a unifying, cohesive, serene theme. Pops of color, which Christy calls bright hues, provide a visual counterpoint to the overall quiet, soothing color palette. Special accents and furnishing accessories include clever or surprising touches, especially in children’s bedrooms.
A hallmark of the home is a spacious, well-appointed, two-story closet that would be the envy of any person who loves dressing well. Built-in cabinetry circles the room and provides ample storage space as well as a large area for hanging clothes according to seasons, color hues, functions or categories.
A central dressing and storage island is designed for accessories and a small dressing seat provides comfort while you decide on shoes and accessories to complement the day’s wardrobe. It would be impossible not to covet this room for your own home.
Other special features include a movie theater adjacent to the game room, a pantry in the kitchen easily accessed from the garage, a wine cellar beneath the staircase on the main floor and an upstairs study hall flanked by chalkboards for a family’s children. In addition, there are an exercise room and a his-and-hers, luxurious, combined shower in the master bath, overlooking the area’s beautiful greenbelt.
Christy laments that it’s sometimes difficult to get high-quality specialty products in the design world. However, for this intriguing project, she pulled out all the stops. She spared nothing in terms of resources to help the builder create a design masterpiece for an upscale family enjoying life to the fullest in this elegant, functional, unique, inspiring home in beautiful surroundings.
