Coastal + Classic Style at This Stunning Sea Island Home

Designer, author and lifestyle expert James Farmer has a knack for creating spaces that celebrate both old world classicism and the ever-changing vernacular of Southern style.

He had a magnificent opportunity to do just that when clients hailing from the Midwest asked him to reimagine the cottage they’d purchased on southeastern Georgia’s Sea Island: “their family had been vacationing there for generations,” he explains of this five mile long and one-and-a-half mile wide, privately-owned barrier island that has become synonymous with casually spectacular resort life.

Tucked among ancient trees festooned with trailing Spanish moss and boasting picturesque views of the Golden Isles’ marshes, the terra-cotta-tiled retreat is the perfect headquarters for escaping winter’s chill. Wildlife shares that sentiment, and more than 300 species of birds have been spotted in the area. With both the home’s distinct natural setting and its storied past in mind, Farmer set out to create a destination that celebrates the best of both.

This interior hallway echoes the lines of the painted white brick on the home’s exterior. Don’t call it shiplap: “I prefer to call this wall treatment horizontal paneling, as that’s more of the proper architectural and design term,” Farmer says. “This creates geometry and texture but is also a wonderful [effect] that paper or grass cloth alone cannot achieve.” Graceful wheat-sheaf sconces and a graphic painted platter offer curvaceous contrasts to those bold planes.

Farmer solved a potential problem with a gorgeous gesture in this powder room. “The skinny buffet lamps add additional lighting to a room that does not have a window,” he explains. “I’m not a big fan of actual vanity lights, so treating a vanity like a chest or a small sideboard with a couple of lamps adds ambience.”