Lisa Cregan: You've coaxed a lot of outdoor living from this little speck of land!
Gregory Shano: We utilized every square inch. The entire lot — with house — is only a third of an acre. And it was nothing but scrappy pine trees and scrubby overgrown bushes when my partner, Michael Giannelli, and I bought the place. We put in a pool, renovated an old detached garage as our poolhouse, and gave the backyard structure with plantings.
No concerns about filling up such a small plot and making it seem even smaller?
It's funny, our previous house — we've been coming to the Hamptons, on the eastern end of Long Island, for 20 years — was on a larger piece of property, but it felt smaller because we didn't have the kind of outdoor rooms we have here. There are little pockets of living space contained within "walls" of clipped boxwood and hydrangea bushes. People wander in and out of the house, they lounge by the pool or stroll through the garden. If they go into the poolhouse to escape the sun, they'll still feel part of what's going on outside. In the evenings, we love to grill and have dinner at the teak table. Then we might sprawl on the rattan in the poolhouse and play backgammon. Life flows naturally to the outdoors here.
Did you work as hard on your indoor rooms as your outdoor ones?
Let's just say the house was much more rustic than it is now. We turned the attic into our master suite and added a great room off the living room. The great room's ceiling is 16 feet high, and it's filled with light from French doors that open to the pool and yard. My goal was to create a complete escape from our weekday life in Manhattan. I wanted it beachy but also chic.
The living room moldings almost feel like rivulets of ocean left behind by a wave.
They're painted a very intentional seafoam blue, and I love the way that color looks against natural textured walls. Even though the living room is mostly neutral, it still reads as blue because everyone notices the trim and comments on it. You know how you can wear khakis and a white shirt and still look colorful with the right accents? It's that same principle.
As a former fashion executive, you should know.
I worked in fashion for 20 years, and I design a house like I'm creating a collection — finding the thread that helps all the plaids, prints, and stripes work together. My muse for this house was the water and the color aqua. You see that shade in every room, but at different levels — a softer version here, a bolder one somewhere else. Each room has its own character, so the house isn't one continuous run-on sentence. The great room has a lot of wall space, so I thought painting walls blue would be too much; just the inside of the bookcases was enough. You don't get a big hit of blue anywhere — except in the master bedroom, where I surprised even myself with all the turquoise. The grass-cloth walls are so cheerful and happy; it always feels like the best summer day up there.
Those bookshelves are like still-life paintings.
I really like to find things and artfully display them. I'm no minimalist! But I had to think hard about color and shape in my previous job, so over time I got better at editing. I always want lots of diversity for nice movement—that's why I love unusual vintage furniture, like the armchairs in the living room and the dining room table. I don't necessarily want symmetry, but I do want balance, and not too much empty space. I'm constantly moving things around. I even took the dust jackets off the books in the great room, because their neutral spines look better against the shelves' blue backgrounds. And when I went hunting on eBay, I wanted white pottery to display in those bookcases.
Ceramics are placed everywhere. Even the lamps seem to mimic their shapes.
I do love clay pots. They're great little works of art — think beautiful small sculptures. Houses are all about right angles; pottery adds shapes and curves. When people collect art they think of paintings for the walls, but there's so much value in placing art on tables and ledges. And I display the pots on trays, which act like a frame around a painting.
With so much activity outside, do you ever use this pretty dining room?
It's really nice on rainy days. The table was originally meant for a garden, so it has an outdoorsy look. We purposely did the wainscoting higher than the norm and painted it in high gloss, so when you're sitting, everything around you feels creamy and light. And the glass orb pendant against the blue-green walls recalls a buoy on the water. The mind-set behind the design of this house is always summer at the beach.
