At first, the renovation of the old farmhouse went well. The homeowners had updated the house inside and out, used beautiful materials and purchased furniture. “But now that they were in the final stages, they were having trouble bringing it all together,” says Sandy Kozar, one half of the Knoxville, Tennessee-based design duo that was hired to finish and beautify the entire house.
“Being builders by trade, they naturally had a pretty good eye – but when it came to the finishing touches, they were overwhelmed,” continues Kozar, who works alongside Rachael Sheridan as lead designer on the Kozar Design Team, part of Decorating Den Interiors, a coalition of individually owned design firms in the U.S. “They knew they needed something, but it was never quite right. They realized that collaborating with someone was a better solution.”
Kozar and Sheridan applied their expertise to the spaces as they already existed, occasionally removing an inappropriate decorative element or moving some furniture around. “It was well done, so the architecture and finishes were a real inspiration for us as we created the rest of the design,” says Kozar. Their work on the master bathroom, which featured luxurious tile and vanities and a sophisticated, calm color palette, offers a glimpse into how a skilled designer’s eye can take any space from “not quite” to “just right.”
Kozar and Sheridan began by delving into the color palette. “One of the clients’ biggest concerns was that the house looked disjointed because there was a lot of red in some places and a lot of blue in others,” Kozar recalls. “They wanted it to look unified.” The designers used the tiles in the shower and surrounding floor, which have a blue undertone, as a starting point. Fortunately, the existing vanities cooperated: “They’re a soft dove gray with a blue undertone,” Kozar says. The countertop, with its rustic, ‘leathery’ finish, “has a nice, inviting look and doesn’t show fingerprints as much as a glossy one. For a relaxed farmhouse interior, a soft matte makes sense.”
To tie the existing hard surfaces together, the designers started with fabric, adding tri-fold valances to windows that had previously been adorned with unassuming shades. Intricate embroidered ribbons add a little more blue and welcome texture. Since the designers had already completed the design for the adjacent master bedroom, they chose matching hues. “The bedding is also this steely charcoal color, so everything felt like a unified fit,” says Kozar.
The freestanding tub is definitely a statement, but its isolation from the shower area makes it feel lonely. So the decorating team added a natural wool rug—“soft, yielding, and comfortable to walk on instead of the tiles,” says Kozar—to bridge the gap, along with a side table for potential bathers to settle into their bubble bath with a glass of wine next to it. No detail was overlooked—the brief, after all, was to give the space an expertly curated sheen with personality—even down to swapping out simple terry towels for soft natural cotton bath towels with gray cable embroidery to match the window treatments.
Opposite the wet area, the designers added a custom velvet-upholstered stool—a strong sign that this isn’t just a utilitarian bathroom, but a place to enjoy. “It was a fun way to introduce additional structure while keeping the color palette tight and defined,” says Sheridan. Even the accessories on the vanity top, like the tissue box and soap dispenser, were chosen with a “more structure, less color” philosophy in mind. Feather artwork now adorns a formerly bare wall, adding a touch of playfulness, while a trio of sculptural branches that adorn both the vanity and the floor near the tub gently connect the opposite sides of the expansive bathroom.
In the hallway leading to the bedroom, a traditional sliding barn door hides a closet. The team enhanced the bathroom’s nod to nature by placing a natural tree-edge bench beneath an oversized mirror. They chose the wood tone to match the frames around the vanity mirrors.
“It’s a step above the typical farmhouse,” Kozar sums up. “Farmhouse-elegant, I would say.”
