How to Design Your Luxe Mountain Dream Home
The Cashiers Designer Showhouse in a charming North Carolina town offers plenty of tips for making your getaway an escape from the ordinary.
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Little Mountain Cabin
A radical break from the rustic mountain cabin with a design motif of pinecones, bears and rainbow trout, this stunning Cashiers, North Carolina home was the site of the 2018 Cashiers Designer Showhouse sponsored by Atlanta Homes & Lifestyles and the Cashiers Historical Society. Rooms instead featured big city flair considering most designers hailed from Atlanta, but also from New Orleans, and the Highlands and Cashiers, North Carolina region. Inspired by chateaux in France and Italy, this 42-acre estate overlooking Lake Glenville was decorated with some au courant trends including lots of assertive, stylish wallpaper, a preponderance of soft pastels, plenty of Chinoiserie and subtle nods to the beautiful local surroundings in botanicals and floral motifs.
First Look
The dramatic foyer of the Cashiers Designer Showhouse in the North Carolina mountains promises a very different kind of vacation cabin experience.
All Dressed Up
A pretty dressing room upstairs from Atlanta designer Sande Beck features a charming wallpaper with colorful birds and a mix of antique and newer pieces. "Wallpaper is more expensive than paint" says Beck, "but you keep it forever."
Curtains = Cozy
Several rooms in the Cashiers Designer Showhouse used curtains on walls rather than windows to create a feeling of plush comfort. Says designer Sande Beck of this upstairs dressing room and bath, "we didn't want it to be too precious. We wanted pretty." To that end they used drapery to hide unappealing cabinets and a timeless blend of old and new in the room with a mix of vintage pieces and fresh new details. Soft pink grasscloth on the ceiling creates a finished look and a mix of framed and unframed art does much to keep things from becoming too precious.
Well-Curated Dressing Table
Art Makes the Room
Color and Texture
A master class in mixing a variety of elements to create a harmonious design, this dressing room shelf makes use of glass, marble, metal and velvet to keep the eye inspired.
Sleep In
Plush draping on this canopy bed, a Barbara Westbrook Italian queen, luxurious wall-to-wall carpeting and the decorative flourish of a round mirror give a comfortable sense of enclosure in this large-scale, sumptuous master bedroom.
Masterful Bed
View to a Thrill
Designer Janie Wilburn incorporated a seating area featuring antique French wooden chairs into her master bedroom for good reason: the spectacular views of the landscape available right outside the window.
Dressing Room
Just off the master bedroom is a spacious master bath featuring two dressing areas and a step down shower room that gives the feeling of a spa-like oasis. One theme of this showhouse was the variety of high quality artwork and novel ways to display it including this vintage French cartoon displayed on a stand-alone easel.
Feminine Allure
A nook dedicated to fashion off of the master bathroom designed by Janie Wilburn is just right for a dressing area. The space features a custom folding screen, vintage fashion sketches and soft, feminine colors of ivory and robin's egg blue in the folding screen, antique French cane chair and wall color.
Luxurious Soak
Designer Douglas Hilton of DWH Designs likes to mix styles in his rooms, from classic to contemporary as seen in his guest bathroom for the Cashiers Designer Showhouse. He also advises homeowners work with galleries when sourcing artwork for their home. When you work through a gallery, they have already vetted the work. And when you establish a relationship over time, the gallery begins to know your style and taste and can make specific recommendations says Hilton.
Lucky Guests
A ground floor guest room by designer Douglas Hilton incorporates plenty of color and luxe details including hue-of-the-moment peacock blue.
Soaking in the Art
Designer Douglas Hilton's ground floor guest bath is a sumptuous study in art and nature with a soaking tub, sculpture, a striking oil painting and stunning Christian Lacroix for Designer's Guild wallpaper that references the great outdoors with cheeky style.
Rustic Chic Kitchen
An open, light-drenched kitchen from designer Sara Brown manages to combine luxury and a rustic feel with its combination of wood cabinets, plants and the beautiful grain of the marble countertops and backsplash.
Let the Light In
In the Pink
Designer Sara Brown created this fresh vignette that shows how easily and casually contemporary photography can be incorporated into a design scheme and easily changed out. Brown leaned the white matted and framed photograph against the kitchen counter and added a touch of color with some nicely complementary millennial pink dishes and gold salt cellars.
Breakfast Nook Art
Flight of Fancy
Designers could not resist bringing the outdoors indoors in their rooms, as with this lyrical display of porcelain butterflies gracing a wall in Sara Brown's breakfast room.
Pastel Pops
Bring Your Garden Inside
No matter how you do it, bring life and beauty to your home with plants and flowers. Designer Sara Brown has incorporated multiple potted houseplants and succulents into both her kitchen and breakfast room design scheme. Her clever arrangement of pink glass vases inside a larger vessel and simple stems of Queen Anne's lace show how to incorporate even wildflowers and simple arrangements into your home as an alternative to expensive arrangements of cut flowers.
Crisp, Captivating Red
Brilliant contrast for these white walls in a compact bathroom by Bill Cook and Michael Faust of Atlanta's Vermilion Designs Interiors, red lampshades and a scarlet skirt for the sink bring a modern punch to the space.
Woodland Theme
A vintage Swedish poster and adorable wallpaper from Spoonflower is the highlight of this Carriage House powder room from Vermilion Design Interiors with offices in both Atlanta and Highlands, North Carolina. Designer Bill Cook of Vermilion was inspired by the home's name, Foxtail, and so decided to decorate this bath appropriately. Cook says he "thought that this was the bath of a rather flamboyant and elusive fox who had escaped the hunt and flaunted his friends and family on the walls...swiping a couple of the red wool British hunting jackets and repurposing them as sink and window treatments."
Fox and Friends
This woodsy and witty bathroom from Vermilion Design Interiors took its cue from a fox who designer Bill Cook says decorated this carriage house bath with some of his favorite things. Cook adds that, "while our main space of the apartment was inspired by a country English gentleman’s den, we chose to give the bathroom more of a sense of whimsy and humor. We even had a bar set up, because we felt that this Fox was a bit of a playboy."
Tranquil Space
Shades of white and green and plenty of flora decor bring the outdoors in in this solarium by Francie Hargrove. Even more use of outside inside: the novel incorporation of the relaxing sound of water in a water fountain at one end of this pretty room.
Water Works
Ode to Nature
The ground floor solarium designed by designer Francie Hargrove of Highlands, North Carolina, brings in elements of the natural setting outdoors with a display of antlers and framed, pressed botanicals. A fern motif on the curtains and floral pillows continue the nods to the great outdoors.
Host With the Most
Knock Out Light
Formalist Foyer
We could all take lessons from Atlanta designer Whitney Ray's impressive foyer console. The ideal blend of art and design, Ray cleverly uses both the top and the underside of this console to display framed art and decorative elements. The mix of representational and abstract art suggests a mini-museum exhibition amidst the obvious functionality of providing a perch for foyer lighting.
Meet and Greet
A wonderfully thoughtful addition to any foyer design plan, a comfortable bench to put on or take off boots or wait for a ride is one of the design insights offered by Wyeth Ray Interiors.
Curation Station
Here, here to another beautifully put-together foyer arrangement from Atlanta designer Whitney Ray. Don't keep your most beautiful antiquarian books hidden away in a library or on a book shelf: display their gorgeous covers in a sideboard or coffee table tableaux.
Preppy Panoply
Pattern and more pattern adds up to an ultra-cozy and all-around fun upstairs bedroom by New Orleans designer Susan Currie.
Garden Party
Color Storm
Intense colors and a playful mix of fabrics give this upstairs bedroom designed by Susan Currie a lively, spirited vibe.
Make Every Moment Count
An epic hallway on the ground floor of the Cashiers Designer Showhouse has been gorgeously outfitted by Atlanta designers, gallerists and shop owners Huff Harrington with vignettes that break up that long corridor. Gold accents, a 19th century French Chinoiserie commode and a pair of stunning leopard chairs bring attitude to what might have been an overlooked space.
Hall of Frame
Great View
A hallway designed by Atlanta's Huff Harrington leads to a solarium from Francie Hargrove of Cashiers.
Work Meets Play
We like how designer Lynn Monday thinks in this home office-slash-bar on the showhome's upstairs level. A generous bar on one side is balanced by a sitting area and bookcases on the other, and the large room leads to a balcony with a glorious view of Lake Glenville.
Multi-Purpose Space
Chinoiserie Glam
A stunning laundry room from Atlanta's Grayson Pratt Interiors makes a daily chore a thing of beauty with Chinoiserie accents including fabric panels placed in cabinets and a statement light fixture overhead.
Mood Board
Little Things Mean a Lot
Dining Allure
The elements that make this dining room from Balance Design work so well: dramatic dark walls and an oversized artwork for impact.
Great Stay
Planning a trip to Cashiers, North Carolina? This charming mountain town is home to an array of home design stores and one signature mountain resort, the Lodge at the Chattooga Club that would make a wonderful berth during your mountain visit. Croquet is a huge pursuit at this gorgeous spot with just seven luxurious suites (think gas fireplace, marble bath, Molton Brown products, complimentary wine and snacks and a wonderfully plush, comfortable home-away-from-home feel) and the most spectacular views imaginable.
