Ep. 481: Meg Braff, Gracious Interiors

How to Decorate

Interior designer Meg Braff returns to the podcast to discuss her new book, 'Gracious Interiors,' and share insights on designing homes for

Key takeaways

• Designing for hosting begins with optimizing floor plans to support multiple dining options and seamless indoor-outdoor flow.
• Wallpaper in guest rooms adds character and coziness while keeping furnishings simple and balanced.

Main topics

• Designing homes for entertaining
• Optimizing floor plans for family life

Notable quotes

"We try to make the outside as easy to use as possible."

Conclusion

Meg Braff's approach to interior design blends Southern hospitality with timeless

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:01) Welcome to How to Decorate from Ballard Designs, a weekly podcast all about the trials and triumphs of decorating and redecorating your home. I'm Caroline. I'm on the marketing team. And I'm Taryn, and I'm a product designer. I'm Liz. I head up the creative team. We're your hosts. Join the expert team at Ballard Designs for tips, tricks, and tales from interior designers, stylists, and other talents in the design world. Plus, we'll answer your decorating dilemmas at the end of each episode. We love answering your questions, so don't forget to email us at podcast at ballarddesigns.net. Speaker 1 (0:30) Now on with the show. Our guest today grew up in Mississippi watching her mother and grandmother entertain with natural grace and charm. And she's been recreating that for clients ever since. She was actually one of our very first guests back in 2017 when she joined us to talk about her first book, The Decorated Home. And now she's back with her second, Gracious Interiors, out now from Rizzoli. It's an in-depth look at nine family homes, including her own, a 1950s Locust Valley, New York ranch. Speaker 1 (1:00) She Completely Transformed. Meg Braff, welcome back to the show. Thank you. So nice to be here. We're so happy to have you back. Of course, last time we were at Karen's house, we were drinking wine, but congratulations on the new book. Thank you. Oh, we're so excited. It's coming out September 8th, and I'm really just thrilled about it. Turned out great. Yes. Well, I loved the, you know, I think in the introduction you talk about learning so much from your mom and grandmother growing up, and I thought maybe we could start there. You know, you've lived in New York most of your adult life, but how do you think growing up in that environment informed your decorating and how you've worked with clients? Well, I would say starting with both my mom and my grandmother, my father's mother, did a lot of entertaining growing up. Speaker 1 (1:58) And often including me to be part of that. So I feel like I learned from a lot of their traditions that they... you know, every year my grandmother would have a Christmas luncheon for myself and I was allowed to invite, you know, maybe six or seven friends to come and we would drive to her house an hour away and she would have this very proper Christmas lunch that she sort of went all out on. And it was just, all my friends looked forward to going every year. It was like a really big deal to get to go. And my mom also just, she would do everything. Like I look back, you know, she would, Speaker 1 (2:36) you know, have a dinner. She would cook the entire meal herself. She would have everything so beautifully organized and, you know, set a beautiful table. And I would sometimes help her, you know, you know, in my nightgown, kind of coming around and helping with passing something or, and that was really a lot of fun. But I think in terms of decorating, I feel like we At the beginning of a project, we spend so much time thinking about how the client really lives and how to really maximize their house. So, you know, we might look at a number of ways that they could entertain in the house. They could have dinner for six over here. We could do a long table for 30 outside. You know, we'll sort of think of different ways to use the rooms and try to make sure that we're giving them the most amount of options as possible. So I think that we're really good at putting a lot of... Speaker 1 (3:30) thought on the front end and also just making sure that the floor plans are optimized, you know, making sure that the house itself, whether it be doing some architectural tweaks or, you know, enlarging a doorway to sort of create more of a balance between two rooms. I think those are things that we really value. And at the very beginning of a project, we look at all of that. Yeah, I love that idea of having different spaces for different size groups. You know, most people, of course, are going to have a dining room and perhaps they're limited by the size of the dining room, but you could always add a breakfast room or you talk about outdoors. I mean, outdoor spaces are just an extension of the inside. We try to, you know, we add awnings or pergolas or covered porches. We try to make the outside as, you know, Speaker 1 (4:23) easy to use as possible. Like sometimes we'll add an outdoor fireplace so that it can prolong the season, you know, that you can have dinners in October outside or, but no, we do, we do really enjoy going through that process. And it's also a great way to learn about the client and how they live. And it also, you know, it informs other decisions with regards to decorating. So, yeah. Well, the book starts with your own home in Locust Valley, which You mentioned that you've relocated, but so you're not necessarily there all the time. But yeah. We live in Florida now, but we love Locust Valley. This is really home. This is where we raised our children. Speaker 1 (5:02) So it was really exciting to find. We looked for years at lots of, I saw every house in Lucas Valley that's been on the market in the last 30 years. We landed on a property that had a ranch style house. It was a one story house with, it had pretty nicely scaled rooms actually. It was on a great piece of property backing up to a golf club. And we set about you know, drawing up plans for this house. It was kind of a hideous looking house, actually. I do have some before pictures somewhere. But we added a second floor. We wanted it to feel like it had always been here. So, and the direction that we went was sort of a Regency style house because I do like a little symmetry and I like the ceiling heights of a Regency style house. And we picked a very nice brick. Speaker 1 (5:58) Even though we knew we were going to whitewash the house, we wanted it to feel, again, like it had some texture and some depth to it. And we went about building this house, and it was such a great experience for me as a designer to go through that process. In the end, I sort of became the general contractor. And it was a great... course of learning for me. It was painful at times, but I wouldn't trade it for anything because I feel like it's made me a better designer and helps me anticipate problems in my clients' construction projects. And it was really exciting to have the opportunity to do that. Speaker 1 (6:36) What were some of the most impactful changes you made in the renovation? Were there certain things that just really paid off? We only kept one room in this project, which was a library, which was, I really kept it, not that it was the most beautiful library I had ever seen. Actually, the wood was sort of not a great color and not really flexible. So we ended up lacquering that room of really pretty short, true screen. But other than that room, we kept the footprint of the house exactly where it was. We kept the basement. We just... completely gutted the basement and added nano doors that led you to the pool from the basement. So it felt less like a basement. We added a second floor with four bedrooms upstairs and a family room, which was great improvement. Speaker 1 (7:26) The doors and windows in the library, which is the room that we kept, had this very large pane of glass. And I loved the scale of it and how it let so much light into the house. And we basically duplicated that throughout the ground floor, those doors. So almost every room, including my bathroom and my husband's bathroom, basically almost every room has a door to a garden to go out on the main floor. Which is really nice. I mean, I open them a lot, actually. I mean, it's nice just to be able to open a door and walk outside. Yeah, yeah. There were a couple of things that, you know, you did in your home, but that you also sort of do as, I guess, repeating gestures or maybe just things that always work. And one of them is the sort of a bedroom with a great, fabulous wallpaper. And then you keep a lot of the furnishings a little bit more quiet, maybe, you know, a solid board or a solid bed. Speaker 1 (8:27) It just kept coming up like it worked in a vacation home and a, you know, a home in Locust Valley, New York or in variety of personal styles. So I was curious, like, what is it about that that works so well? And is that something you think a person could do on their own if they're not working with a designer? Absolutely. I think it's the easiest thing to do because you can also just lean into that wallpaper or... paperback fabric or whatever it is on the walls. And you could repeat that on the shades and, you know, repeat it on the furniture or just kind of lean into like a solid and a very tonal type of way. We like to add pattern on pattern just because it's fun. And I think people love to feel enveloped in a bedroom. And I feel like wallpaper or a paperback, sometimes we put wallpaper on the back of fabric and hang it like wallpaper. But I think Speaker 1 (9:23) It adds warmth. It adds interest at eye level. Sometimes if you have, you know, not great architecture, it's a great way to make a room just feel more special and especially in a guest room. I think we almost always wallpaper the guest rooms just because it just feels like you're expected. It feels special and you want it to be memorable when a guest is staying with you. You almost can make the one dramatic statement and then... You do a lot of other things, but you can imagine how you wouldn't have to do a lot of other things, but it still feels finished. You could just do that, and it will just feel like you've made an enormous effort for whoever's staying there. Yeah, well, you mentioned in one of the chapters about guest rooms. Yes. Part of being a great hostess is having your guests not think that you... Speaker 1 (10:22) Or they inconvenienced you. Right. And I loved that thought. And I was curious, you know, maybe you could walk our listeners through what that means in a practical way. Well, I think it's whether if you're hosting a dinner party or a cocktail party or a lunch, I think it's just really important to be present. Like you don't want to be constantly running around looking. for a serving piece or something like that. I mean, whether you have people helping you or not, I think there's a lot of thoughtfulness that can go into preparing to entertain. So I think that's the key thing is, you know, have your music set, have all those things that you can do in advance, you know, buy the wine the day before, you know, the week before, get all your napkins pressed, you know, not the day of the party. I think you can do a lot in advance so that Speaker 1 (11:15) Because you want to just make your guests feel like it was very effortless and that you are completely present and you just want to have fun and see your friends. And I think if it's someone staying with you, I think, again, just make sure that their medicine cabinet is, you know, either empty or maybe filled with some of your favorite shampoos and bath oils and things like that. Again, just so they feel like they were expected having a little carafe of water next to the bed. a little plate with some fruit and a knife. Speaker 1 (11:48) I think those little touches are actually quite nice. Sure. There might be a little note there saying what the Wi-Fi password is or, you know, those kinds of things. Well, right. And if you've thought about their needs, I guess, or things that might come up, then they don't have to ask you, you know, where's your Advil or what's the Wi-Fi password? And then they feel more comfortable because they're not having to ask you for extras. Yeah. Okay, I wanted to know, you say you entertain a lot, and what does the hour before guests show up for a dinner party or a cocktail party look like for you? What are you doing the hour before? I'll be honest, I'm just getting dressed. I feel like I really go out of my way. Sometimes we'll even, if it's a very... Speaker 1 (12:35) kind of specific dinner where we've had tablecloths made and we want to be sure we have the right count and everything. I mean, I will even the day before set the table and then unset it just to make sure there's not going to be a big surprise, you know, because, you know, I might think, oh, I have all my bamboo flatware here in Locust Valley, but actually I might have taken it to Newport or something like that. So we really do look at the count, make sure the vases are the right size, make sure we have the right... I mean, I usually... Speaker 1 (13:03) do the flowers. Jason Schwartz, who works with me, is like an incredible flower. I mean, he just, he's so good with flowers. So we have a lot of fun with that and try to do it together. That gets done the day of the party, but not the hour before, thankfully. But it's nice. I try to get the music going at least an hour before the party and make it feel like, you know, just getting ready time. Speaker 1 (13:28) So you're just taking care of yourself at that