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House Beautiful, July 2004
"Summer Breeze"
After one unhappy experience, Mark and Maggie DiStefano were skeptical about decorators, but Markham Roberts set their minds - and their new Hamptons house - at ease
Once bitten, twice shy. That's how Maggie DiStefano felt after a run-in with a decorator who left much to be desired.
"I had just finished doing a townhouse in New York, and it wasn't a great experience," she says. Maggie and her husband, Mark, were underwhelmed by the decorator's lack of follow-through. Ditto his convoluted billing system.
But her big new getaway place in Southampton was being built, and it needed designing - fast. "I was so nervous about using another decorator," she says. "I had been burnt once, I wasn't doing it again."
The DiStefano's wanted a summer home feel, but since their place weighs in at 15,000 square feet, the beach cottage look wasn't going to cut it.
The decorator who entered their life, Markham Roberts, arrived like a white knight, putting them at ease with his attention to detail and overall vision. He came up with a "relaxed traditional" look that was both proper and durable, considering the vigorous activities of the couple's two twenty-something daughters and their many friends.
"They wanted it to look nice," says Roberts. "But they didn't want some sort of fussy showplace. They're really low key themselves, and I think the house reflects that."
The main color scheme was going to be simple: lots of white, cream and brown. Both decorator and client loved this soothing combination, which brings to mind a large cup of coffee, light and sweet.
His first purchase for the house was admirably quixotic: a vase made of real antlers, which he filled with ostrich eggs and put in the relatively spare entrance hall. It baffled the DiStefano's at first - but once they saw the overall scheme, they understood how the nurturing symbol fit in.
Roberts designed much of the furniture himself, going for velvet, tufting and ticking - all powerful vehicles on the road to cushy comfort. He was able to work in Maggie's favorite accent colors, red and green, in several rooms. He also wanted a dozen or so antiques to set the tone of the house. In the entrance hall, he picked a 19th-century Anglo-Indian settee and a table of the same pedigree, inlaid with mother of pearl and ivory. For the dining room, he chose contemporary chairs with wheel-back splats in the shape of rosettes. Bronze-colored grass cloth walls boosted the room's rich look. And to prove how important family is to the DiStefano's, Maggie's 72-year old mother - Marguerite McFarlane, a trained decorative painter - stenciled a bamboo grove on the walls.
The master bedroom was the apex of the collaboration between decorator and client. Maggie said she wanted softness, and she got it, but without monotony. On her four-poster bed that Roberts remade and expanded, he hung creamy muslin, and then chose a gentle floral fabric for the walls. Ticking covers the his-and-her chaises. "Because we were using this really muted palette, I really wanted to add pattern," says Roberts. "Otherwise it would've been visually boring."
This finely calibrated response to a client's request should be the decorating norm, of course. "You know what Markham does? He listens," says Maggie. "And that, to me, is what it's all about."
"Summer Breeze"
After one unhappy experience, Mark and Maggie DiStefano were skeptical about decorators, but Markham Roberts set their minds - and their new Hamptons house - at ease
Once bitten, twice shy. That's how Maggie DiStefano felt after a run-in with a decorator who left much to be desired.
"I had just finished doing a townhouse in New York, and it wasn't a great experience," she says. Maggie and her husband, Mark, were underwhelmed by the decorator's lack of follow-through. Ditto his convoluted billing system.
But her big new getaway place in Southampton was being built, and it needed designing - fast. "I was so nervous about using another decorator," she says. "I had been burnt once, I wasn't doing it again."
The DiStefano's wanted a summer home feel, but since their place weighs in at 15,000 square feet, the beach cottage look wasn't going to cut it.
The decorator who entered their life, Markham Roberts, arrived like a white knight, putting them at ease with his attention to detail and overall vision. He came up with a "relaxed traditional" look that was both proper and durable, considering the vigorous activities of the couple's two twenty-something daughters and their many friends.
"They wanted it to look nice," says Roberts. "But they didn't want some sort of fussy showplace. They're really low key themselves, and I think the house reflects that."
The main color scheme was going to be simple: lots of white, cream and brown. Both decorator and client loved this soothing combination, which brings to mind a large cup of coffee, light and sweet.
His first purchase for the house was admirably quixotic: a vase made of real antlers, which he filled with ostrich eggs and put in the relatively spare entrance hall. It baffled the DiStefano's at first - but once they saw the overall scheme, they understood how the nurturing symbol fit in.
Roberts designed much of the furniture himself, going for velvet, tufting and ticking - all powerful vehicles on the road to cushy comfort. He was able to work in Maggie's favorite accent colors, red and green, in several rooms. He also wanted a dozen or so antiques to set the tone of the house. In the entrance hall, he picked a 19th-century Anglo-Indian settee and a table of the same pedigree, inlaid with mother of pearl and ivory. For the dining room, he chose contemporary chairs with wheel-back splats in the shape of rosettes. Bronze-colored grass cloth walls boosted the room's rich look. And to prove how important family is to the DiStefano's, Maggie's 72-year old mother - Marguerite McFarlane, a trained decorative painter - stenciled a bamboo grove on the walls.
The master bedroom was the apex of the collaboration between decorator and client. Maggie said she wanted softness, and she got it, but without monotony. On her four-poster bed that Roberts remade and expanded, he hung creamy muslin, and then chose a gentle floral fabric for the walls. Ticking covers the his-and-her chaises. "Because we were using this really muted palette, I really wanted to add pattern," says Roberts. "Otherwise it would've been visually boring."
This finely calibrated response to a client's request should be the decorating norm, of course. "You know what Markham does? He listens," says Maggie. "And that, to me, is what it's all about."