A bright-yellow door pops against the siding in Hawaiian Blue by Western States Metal Roofing, immediately establishing this vacation home’s color palette.
Design’s golden rule is that a house should reflect the homeowners. For Kevin Sawyers’ clients, Toby Peterson and Angie Sticher, that meant infusing their Sonoma County cottage with saturated color, a quirky mix of prints and a footprint made for hosting. “Angie has one of the biggest personalities I’ve ever encountered,” the designer laughs. “And they’re both about entertaining a thousandfold.”
Loll Designs counter stools pull up to the granite-topped bar, which opens to the kitchen, creating the ultimate indoor-outdoor living experience. “They’re always entertaining,” Sawyers explains. “So to have that opportunity to open up these spaces like that, it really hit the nail on the head.”
Fun clients mean fun design, but before furnishings and colors could be considered, there came the not nearly as exciting aspects: permits, foundation issues and environmental regulations. It soon became clear that what began as a renovation would need to be a ground-up rebuild. Where some might feel frustration, Sawyers saw opportunity, using this as a chance to design an internal courtyard that provided an indoor-outdoor entertaining space. “It created an amazing connection to the outdoors from the dining room and one of the guest bedrooms and, most importantly, from the kitchen, where a giant window opens to the outside bar,” the designer relates.
Sawyers had previously designed the couple’s San Francisco townhouse, incorporating teals, yellows and corals. For this project, he wanted to up the ante. “This is a resort home for them,” he explains. “I wanted to take things even further.” That meant steering away from the happy palette of their main house and leaning into moody oranges, cobalt blues, pale greens and bright yellow (the one nod to the Peterson and Sticher’s main home).
Dunn-Edwards’ Cedar Grove creates drama on cabinetry and walls throughout the first-floor kitchen and main living area, while the brand’s Silver Fern hue adds unexpected contrast.…