There is a persistent idea that a family home must choose between beautiful and durable. I have never accepted it, and my clients’ homes are the argument.
Performance fabrics ended the choice years ago. The velvets and boucles that survive small children now exist, from serious mills, and they are indistinguishable at arm’s length. The sofa can be the good sofa. It simply has to be specified by someone who knows which good sofa.
Rooms should work more than one shift. In a Hoboken loft we combined for a family of six, the family room earns its keep three ways: study, TV room, and guest room, with a custom Murphy bed built into the cabinetry. Nothing about it announces versatility. It simply becomes what the day needs.
Storage is the difference between a family home that looks designed and one that looks like it is losing to the household. Custom built-ins that swallow the daily tide of a household are not a luxury line item. They are the design.
Round the corners where children run, put the fragile things up and the sturdy beauty low, and choose stone and wood finishes that improve with wear instead of recording it. Materials with some forgiveness in them are the quiet secret of every polished family home.
The homes with children in them are usually the best thought through. They have to be.
