By her own admission, Annie Downing doesn’t typically do white houses. Known for her color-happy approach to interiors, the Austin-based designer and AD PRO Directory member, is always more than game for incorporating every shade of the rainbow into her projects, but she also knows when to call a time-out. When a client requested a vibrant Kelly green office in his Texas Hill Country home, she carefully considered whether they had too much of a good thing. “I was using a lot of saturated colors to the point where I was questioning if it would work, but their enthusiasm made it all so exciting,” she says of her clients. “They were so on board with every idea—I wasn’t used to people being so responsive.”
Clients who favor black clothing and white cars are perhaps least likely to express interest in such an eye-popping hue, but Downing says the homeowners—California transplants who wanted to infuse their 8,350-square-foot new construction home with conviviality and personality for their three young daughters—pushed her to go bolder at every turn. “I try not to be too much of a serious person,” says the husband. “We just wanted fun things that make you smile.”
So Downing ran with the design brief, working with the architects at 787 Design Studio to craft family-friendly spaces and sourcing daring patterns and energetic colors to bring them to life. Take the living room, where a jigsaw-puzzle-like custom cocktail table, upholstered in coral-hued Natasha Badararan performance jacquard, features teal pull-away stools for playful seating. “We both grew up in houses where there was a no-touch room,” says the wife, who reveals that the table has become a makeshift stage for after-school dance parties. “I didn’t want anything in the house to be so formal that the kids can’t play with it.”
