California Cool Comes to Atlanta in This Idea-Packed Showhouse

The Santa Barbara-style estate set on six private acres in Atlanta's posh Buckhead neighborhood is a testament to the difference 15 designers and four landscape architects can make when they focus on a specific family's needs instead of dialing their designs up to 11 (as is common in group projects like this one). "There was so much restraint in this showhouse," Melanie Turner, the project's honorary chair, explains. "It's calm, it's simple, there are fewer pieces in each of the rooms, but what is in there is very special and more purposeful."

Turner asked the designers to imagine a couple with children relocating to Atlanta from southern California, and to reflect their home state's coastal style.

Doing so involved taking the house "down to the studs," she says. The 11,000 square feet of airy, yet intimate, living space includes a showstopping glass-walled family room addition, a new outdoor pool with a built-in sectional and fire pit, one-of-a-kind finishes and spectacular art.

The home's rotunda has stunning dimensions but, "while vertically dramatic, it was a fairly compact space to try to enhance with furnishings," says designer Mark Williams. His muse was nature, and the home's indoor/outdoor atmosphere inspired him to create a soft, subtle femininity counterbalanced with “a certain grounded strength” in the space. A graphic, botanical Alexander McQueen area rug and a portrait by artist Fabiola Jean-Louis anchor the design.

"Stair halls can be tricky," Williams says, "because you want to light them dramatically, but you must also light them effectively. Probably more than any area of the house, you want to be sure that people can see clearly when they are on the stairs!" The multiple etched-glass teardrops in the Apparatus "Lariat" light fixture he chose complements the home's architecture perfectly. The trio of delicate mixed-media sculptures by Blake Dowling Weeks, in turn, provide "a beautiful focal point at the top of the stairs that wouldn't compete with the large-scale painting which dominates the upper stair hall," Williams explains. The pieces suit the space because Weeks intended them for the space: "we wanted something special in that location, so we simply described our overall vision to him and let him do his thing," Williams says.