Published As:
Design Vocabulary
Interior Design: Chandos Collective
Text: Lisa Bingham Dewart
Photography: Kris Ellis
While Houston might be miles from Paris, both geographically and aesthetically speaking, interior designer Chandos Dodson Epley of Chandos Collective took a decidedly French approach to recasting her clients’ River Oaks residence. The couple had fallen in love with a home built in the early 1990s on a stunning lot, boasting good bones, finely wrought details, and the perfect size and location. The one challenge: It was designed in a traditional Southern style that was out of sync with the new owners’ tastes. “We decided not to disrupt the architectural vocabulary and let it stand out against more contemporary furnishings,” Dodson Epley says of her game plan, an approach inspired by Parisian apartments in centuries-old buildings, where old and new engage in animated dialogue.
The interior designer’s intent appears at once. She retained the foyer’s intricate parquet floor, arched door openings and millwork, but reworked the stair rail. “It had been just wood spindles,” she says. “We added a skirt, a brass handrail, and iron spindles. It changed the room, making it feel more formal and elegant.” The walls received attention, too, losing their buttery yellow hue in favor of a crisp white that repeats throughout, bestowing a gallery-like feel around the residence. Dodson Epley kept other details, too. The moody bar retains its mirrored backsplash, smoky gray cabinetry, and high-contrast stone countertop but now has a geometric patterned Holly Hunt wallpaper, and the dining room kept the hand-painted walls and moldings.
When the designer made large-scale changes, she went big, leaning into the new-meets-old vision. Take the kitchen, conceived in concert with Somatic. The sleek space evokes modern European examples, defined by glossy lacquered Macassar ebony cabinetry, a custom hood made of cold-rolled steel, and a deep trough-style sink, all crowned by a Gabriel Scott fixture overhead. The primary bedroom received its own dramatic makeover. “We decided to treat it as its own world,” says Dodson Epley. Unlike the rest of the house, which has heavy crown and base moldings in most rooms, a wall of fumed oak paneling rises behind the bed, unadorned except for 14-karat-gold filets for a clean backdrop. Her move also hid a door, which was added as part of a revamp that included folding in an existing bedroom to create a closet and bath for the husband.
Dodson Epley’s furniture selections take a similarly contemporary turn. “We knew everything needed to have a clean line and be unfussy,” she says, pointing to pieces such as the chest of drawers in the foyer that, while sporting gilding and lacquer, still has a pared-down, Art Deco quality. Simple, though, doesn’t mean boring in her hands. Unique finds and engaging juxtapositions abound, emphasizing varied textures and materials. A multi-hued Kyle Bunting hide rug co-mingles in the dining room with a reverse-painted glass-and-steel Profiles sideboard. In the great room, she paired a sofa covered in a deep indigo Natasha Baradaran fabric with an A. Rudin lounge chair on a round pedestal base covered in a Romo jacquard velvet.
Dodson Epley’s expertise extends beyond interior design. She also has an art advisory practice, C2 Art, and worked closely with the clients to add to their collection since “there were a lot of substantial walls, so we needed things with scale and interest to draw the eye around,” she says. She and the couple traveled to New York City to visit galleries and attend the season’s contemporary auctions, where they purchased a stainless-steel sculpture by Francisco Sobrino for the foyer. The designer also found pieces by local Houston artists like Mara Held, whose work on paper hangs in the dining room, and Christian Eckart, whose digital print on canvas graces an upstairs hallway. To take a traditional-style home and update it, especially with contemporary art, furnishings and finishes, could be a dicey proposition in the wrong hands—something that Dodson Epley knows happens all too often. “Sometimes you go into a house, and it feels like a game show because every room is different,” she says. Her superpower, though, rests on her belief in consistency. “I’m a big fan when it comes to a design vocabulary,” she says. “I aim to give people longevity in their homes, so they will love as much in twenty years as they do now.” Chandos Collective, chandoscollective.com
