After stints living in Tokyo, Hong Kong and New York City, Julie and Tom Nelson moved to St. Louis, Julie’s hometown. They lived in an apartment here for nearly a decade, enjoying the sense of freedom that comes from maintenance-free living.
But they wanted a little more space, so when the opportunity came to purchase a home in a villa community in Creve Coeur, they jumped at the chance. “My lifetime best friend’s parents decided to make a big downsizing move, and we ended up purchasing their house, and it just felt really good to have things happen that way,” Julie says.
“Although it’s a little more traditional than our aesthetic now, this house had good bones and I knew it had the space where I could host family events and entertain,” she adds. And as an interior designer, Julie was eager for the opportunity to utilize her talents in her own home after years of apartment living. “The house gave me a wonderful foundation to make it sort of my ‘test kitchen’ for design, to have no boundaries, and to do whatever I want in this beautiful space.”
In her design "test kitchen," Julie likes to “stir things up a bit.” The owner of Julie Nelson Interiors, she says a design school professor once asked her why she consistently created color schemes where she was banging her head against the wall. “My answer to him then is the same now, and that my goal is always to create something interesting and that means more to me than it being beautiful.”
Julie laughs as she relates her color inspiration for the home was based on a scarab watch she had in high school. Julie remembers her Egyptian Revival watch held lapis, jade and tiger’s eye gemstones. Bracelets of the era could also feature carnelian, aventurine and obsidian.
“I wanted to take these basic colors, which are very warm, and then use it in a template that adds some extra energy so the colors don’t come off muddy,” she explains. “The first thing I wanted to do was make sure I added a good amount of color to the walls.”
Case in point: the living room, where she chose to bathe the walls in a shade of saffron. After much consideration, she decided to keep the original coffered ceilings white to balance the bold hues for the furnishings. A media console by USM Haller in a glossy blue stands opposite a traditional fireplace Julie repainted blue. She flanked the media unit with Louis XV chairs — family heirlooms she reupholstered in a Jane Churchill cut velvet fabric reminiscent of a sunset. “The fabric gives the chairs a little bit of rock ‘n’ roll, as my husband and I like to say,” Julie laughs. An abstract painting by Leo Vernon Jensen hangs above the grouping. “This is all the perfect example of how I like to design, mixing a lot of different things but it all pairs together through scale and the color tones.”
The room’s pièce de resistance, however, is a 48-inch round ottoman of Julie’s design. “I strongly considered an acrylic coffee table because we already had a lot of color in here, and I didn’t want it to look like Pee-Wee Herman's Playhouse,” she says. “I wanted it to look sophisticated, but my practical side hit, too. I thought I would do a round ottoman, which wouldn’t have any sharp corners for our new grandchild and because we have so many rectangles and squares in this room.” She says finding a Samuel & Sons silk fringe in blue, gold and cream for the ottoman was like a sign from heaven. “It fit the color scheme I’d already started, so I thought it was just meant to be.”
To make the home uniquely theirs, Julie wanted to incorporate elements indicative of their lives. When the couple lived in Tokyo, the closest bus stop stood on a street lined with gingko trees. “Every day I stood waiting for the local bus and felt like the luckiest person to be living in Tokyo,” Julie says. To evoke a bit of the same feeling, Julie and Tom worked with artist Susan Greene, owner of Paint Imagery, to create a large-scale mural featuring abstract gingko leaves for the stairwell.
“I had never done gingko leaves before and I love large-scale, so for me, this was definitely original and unique,” says Susan. “The leaves are large and they are transparent, so you get a feel of the base color coming through. And the stairwell is at the entry, so it’s the first look at the house, which really brings the essence of who they are and what they wanted in the design of their home.”
The most gorgeous colors and artwork won’t resonate without good lighting. “Without that, things just don’t sing,” Julie says, and good lighting can’t be executed without the proper electrical work. In the Nelson home, electrician Gerard McGahan and Julie spent considerable time planning the stairwell’s lighting, which ultimately included the addition of multiple square lights.
“I wasn’t sure this could be done,” Gerard says of the design to light a mural in a large spiral staircase with a 22-foot ceiling. “But we installed one of the fixtures that was most accessible to show Julie what it did on the mural. She loved it, I loved it, and we proceeded. I tend to do a sample like that with all my designs and that way, you don’t end up with a full install that someone's not happy with for one reason or another.”
Through such careful planning and thoughtful consideration, the design process has taken Julie nearly three years. “I was working on client homes as well, but I also really like the patient approach,” Julie says. “I took my time. And now our home feels like a permanent ray of sunshine, enveloping me in joy every day.”
Resources:
Foyer/Stairwell:
• Hand-painted mural ~ Sue Greene, Paint Imagery
• Antique Chest ~ Jules Pass Antiques
• Art ~ Alicia LaChance, purchased at Pele Prints
• Rug ~ Jaipur Living
Kitchen:
• Backsplash Tile ~ Midwest Tile
• Tile Installer ~ Jerry Keyes Tile
• Table & Chairs ~ Cool Stuff Period
• Window Treatments ~ Cloth & Kind
• Wallpaper ~ Clarke & Clarke
• Rug, Design & Detail
• Lighting ~ Visual Comfort
• Art ~ Seth Smith
• Hand-painted Cabinet ~ Paint Imagery, Sue Greene
Dining Room:
• Wallpaper on Ceiling ~ ROMO
• Fabric on Chairs ~ Casamance
• Window Treatment ~ Pindler
• Trim ~ Stout
• Rug ~ ABC Carpet
• Furniture & Asian Screen ~ family pieces
• Bamboo Cages ~ Warson Woods Antiques
Powder Room:
• Wallpaper ~ Scalmandre
• Mirror ~ painted by Sue Greene, Paint Imagery
• Lighting ~ Visual Comfort
Den:
• Wallpaper ~ Thibaut
• Rug ~ Stark
• Sofa ~ Hickory Chair
• Pillow Fabric ~ Clarence House
• Chairs & Cocktail Table ~ family pieces
• Asian Buffet ~ Warson Woods Antiques
• Altar Table ~ Mark O.Howald Antiques
• Chandelier ~ Visual Comfort
• Lamps ~ Brody’s
• Art ~ Carmon Colangelo, purchased at Bruno David Gallery
• Woodblock Prints ~ Kyoto
Living Room/Bar
• Bench Fabric ~ Black Edition
• Large Vases ~ Link Auction
• Ceramic Elephant ~ MOHowald Antiques
• Boucle Chairs ~ Kravet
• Fabric for Pillows on Boucle Chairs ~ Jiun Ho
• Chrome Vessels on Mantle ~ MoModerne
• Lighting ~ Visual Comfort
• Ottoman ~ custom design, Colony fabric, Samuel & Sons fringe
• Tray on Ottoman ~ Cool Stuff Period
• Fabric on Louis XV Chairs ~ Jane Churchill
• Garden Stool ~ MOHowald Antiques
• Rug ~ LK2 Kaim Kisner Studio
• Deco Chairs ~ MOHowald, Fabric ~ Kravet
• Glass Drink Table ~ Mecox
• Lumbar pillows ~ Cloth & Kind
• Round Side Table ~ Kravet
• Sofa fabric ~ Kravet
• Sofa pillow fabrics ~ Osborne & Little
• Vintage Pillow ~ Creel & Gow
• Drapery ~ Wind
• Glass & Metal Console ~ Design & Detail
• Gourds ~ Link Auction
• Media Center ~ USM Haller
• Large Modern Art ~ Link Auction
• Medium Modern Art ~ Cool Stuff Period
• Paintings inside Bar area ~ bought on the streets of Soho
Primary Bedroom
• Headboard ~ Antique fabric
• Valances & Bedskirt ~ Fabricut
• Drapery ~ Schumacher
• Coverlet & Shams ~ Ann Gish
• Bolster fabric ~ Cloth & Kind
• Schumacher Sofa
• Sofa Pillow fabric ~ Schumacher
• Club Chair fabric ~ Mulberry
• Seat Cushions ~ Schumacher
• Hand Sewn Embroidered Lumbar Pillows ~ Textile Artist Maki Yamamoto
• Vintage Rattan Lamps ~ Mecox
• Lampshades ~ Bunny Williams Home
• Carpet ~ Design & Detail
• Highboy Chest ~ Stamford Modern
• Antique Chair ~ Mark O. Howald Antiques
