Design Advice

Dining rooms can be the most playful areas of a home. Color-loving interior designer Perry Walter jazzed up this circa-1925 Virginia-Highland condo by highlighting the existing molding.

“Sometimes the smallest, unexpected spaces are the most fun to work with,” says interior designer Lee Kleinhelter, who transformed an attic space in Brookwood Hills into a memorable multipurpose room.

Part home office, part library, this multi-purpose room in an Oak Grove house serves the whole family from morning to night. Thanks to interior designer Trish Roe with the Georgian Goose, it’s both functional and stylish.

This Cumming house may be new, but designer Lisa Gabrielson gave it a “granny chic” look, notably in this primary suite bathroom. “We went for a restful approach, with muted colors and materials like you’d find in an old farmhouse,” she says.

The marble lobby in downtown’s Candler Hotel exudes Beaux-Arts glamour like nothing else in Atlanta. Built by Coca-Cola magnate Asa Candler as an office building in 1906, the property was remodeled into a luxury hotel in 2019.

“Like stone and wood, metal is a material I feel should be incorporated into every project,” says interior designer Michael Habachy. For this Tuxedo Park house, a 25-foot-tall fireplace clad in steel gives the great room a dramatic focal point.

“I love living with different design eras,” says interior designer Laura Jenkins, whose circa-1905 Grant Park bungalow has 11-foot ceilings and original heart-pine floors to provide a great setting for her home office.

For obvious reasons, the last couple of years have seen a boom in home entertaining. Many Atlantans have gotten especially creative with their basements, installing bunk rooms, game tables, home gyms, wine rooms, even entire kitchens. Here, two families take different approaches to decorating their terrace levels—one going dark and cozy, the other light and bright. Both make for inviting places to hang out.

At this Lake Martin vacation home, a bunk room and bath accommodate extra guests. “In lake houses, a camp-style bath allows multiple people to use the bathroom at the same time,” says Atlanta architect Bryan Jones of Jones Pierce Studios.

Gardens can get a bad rap in late summer—with wilting flowers and fewer blooms than in spring—but interior designer and author James Farmer added architecture and heat-tolerant plants so that his backyard excels even in August.