Blue is the undisputed protagonist and it can be called “The King” of the colors of décor at the sea.
From Greek islands with the famous blue domes of Santorini.
To the Aeolian Islands, with the home doors, the extern frames, the pavements and the blue earthenware.
To the French Riviera to Saint Tropez where blue and light blue have multiple shades.
In these places I named the Blue is dominant, outside and inside of the houses, and not casually is the color chosen for the beach houses.
It’s the color of the sky and the sea, a color that gives serenity, tranquility and peace, the color we need during our vacancy to recharge.
It’s so important to choose for our house the right color, the color scale is essential for the purpose of a renovation and it has to be searched before everything.
It happened a lot of times that the color of a living room wall influenced the rest of the apartment, including carpets, furniture, paintings to put, also hooves to look for.
It’s the same for a stone wall, travertine, resin or any other material.
So color plays a fundamental rule, even more in a beach house where with few elements you décor a house and the result we can get is a high level.
Together with the blue, declined in thousands of shades, there’s the color/non color par excellence, white, which is our base.
In the Board, the first picture right on top is how I concept a white and blue décor in a beach house. Often few elements play a very chic result.
An armchair and a bedspread made “simply” special a bedroom, a room in which you can regenerate, in which you don’t need anything but enter, look at the sea and find yourself, as in an art canvas, all the rest fills in.
In the second picture there’s a typical Aeolian pavement.
I also saw minimal and modern bathrooms and kitchens with this earthenware and I had to admit that the result is interesting. Try to blend the styles, the materials, colors, but always start from a clear aim, the result we want to obtain to live better at home.
You don’t need much else.
In a beach house you need practicality, pavements that shines with less work and few functional objects to control and your details will make the difference.
I took care of various beach houses and I had great satisfactions.
I still remember a job, a beautiful villa to restructure, the inside came great and was completed, but the outside had to be done, works ran long for the deliveries of the materials on the island.
It was June and the couple wanted to enter and not to wait August as agreed. It was missing all the outside and the pavement was in a bad shape, all ruined, porous and chipped… even plants grew among the leakage.
It was missing to build the kitchen outside in masonry and the clients still haven’t decided for the trellis, while fortunately I had anticipated and I already had ordered the outside furniture that should have been arrived in a few days.
I had to accommodate my clients and I thought about plan B, as they say.
I’ve made the extern repaint in white. I’ve made canvas mounted instead of trellis, since it was easier to find them and send them back. While the trellis had to be ordered, sent and mounted so it didn’t make it for august when companies close.
I had the pavement cleaned with specific products that took a surprising color, spackle the leakages and fix the edges of the flowers beds, even if I still didn’t like it, we know that it was a passenger choice, in September we would have intervened with a new pavement and then the rest of the works.
But the homeowner, who loves to receive, like me, look at me and told me that it still disturbed her and that when she lived in the patio she didn’t feel happy.
I immediately understood what she meant; I feel the same when home isn’t how I want it. So, studying her rituals, and how she “lived” the patio, I intervened like this:
I accurately took care, step by step; of the path she did entering the villa when she comes back from the beach, used light mats in white and blue canvas, so beautiful, creating carpets with zones: aperitif zone, bed zone, dinner table zone.
I inserted in different points lanterns with candles and a very suggestive lightning also inside the flower beds, more like a path than a real enlightenment.
At the end when I had all this mounted and she came back home, she was impressed of who the pavement, although still visible it wasn’t in the foreground, but instead it goes with all the rest, so much that in the end of August she asked me: are we sure of changing the pavement?
And so it remains! Sure, fixed and cured it’s better, but it’s still there.
What do I want to say with all this? That sometimes you don’t need to throw everything away and have everything redone, sometimes something already existing just need a little of retouch and be enhanced to have a new life.
The mats, the lanterns, the outside furniture and the enlightenment of the plants in the flower beds do the rest, because they created a scenography, where old and new lived together creating that magic that if they were all new, it probably wouldn’t exist.
Now that house had a soul.
Put something of yourself, your beach hats, your bags of straw or your St. Barth collection hung anywhere…
I love to put on the walls elements more than paintings, and for many years you can find metal objects of different measures, like fishes, starfishes and so much more to create sculptural walls.
I clearly remember a shop in Santorini where I bought some butterflies metal carving for my home, it had fishes of different shapes to create unique walls.
Because when I enter a house the first characteristic it must have is to be unique, as who lives there.
In the Board you find the table set, and it’s my table at the beach, that is the Blue shade I really love, and the shell as a placeholder.
In the picture in the bottom you find a picture of the whole table.
I prefer the placemats rather than the tablecloths that in summer are banned.
There are placemats of any kind. My favorites are made in rope or in linen.
Remember that at the sea the first word is practical,
Often we meet friends at the port while we go down from a ship and we date at home to eat freshly caught fish. Whose house? Ours, like always, so the time to take a shower, set the table and there’s no time to invent a sophisticated mise en place.
But we’ll be reminded anyway. Because when we have our musts at home and the things to keep in order are few but styled, we’re halfway done.
And for the handling of the table it’s the same.
Few things but impressive. Some shells or something with fish or corals… these fantasies will enrich your summer table and it’ll suffice some candle for dinner.
Always for a last minute dinner, it can miss a couple Prosecco bottles in the fridge or white wine. As our friends arrive uncork the bottle, cut some Parmesan and salami with loafs… and let’s begin our convivial moment!
See you next time… with Style! Definitely yours!
Viviana Grunert
