the lincoln park residence
Location
Scope
Year
Duration
Lincoln Park, Chicago
Full Interior
2024
11 months
the brief
The clients came to me with a beautiful property and a genuine problem. They had renovated twice in ten years and each time ended up with a home that looked correct but felt somehow neutral. Not wrong — just unconvincing.
They are a couple who live with real intention — they cook seriously, they read, they entertain rarely but memorably. Their home had none of that in it. It looked like a stage set for a life, rather than the life itself.
The challenge was not to redesign the space. It was to find what the space was actually trying to be — and then have the conviction to commit to it.
A home that had
everything — except
a point of view.
client
Private Residence
property
Victorian Greystone, 4,200 sq ft
rooms
All Principal Rooms
scope
Full Interior Direction
Completed
March 2024
SOLÉNE'S APPROACH
I began by
taking things
away.
The first thing I did after signing the brief was ask them to remove everything from the main reception rooms. Not to redecorate — just to see the bones. What we found was extraordinary. The original plaster cornicing, the proportions of the windows, the relationship between the front room and the garden.
The house already knew what it was. It was a late Victorian greystone with extraordinary bones and very particular light — cool in the morning, warm by afternoon. Everything I specified had to work in both conditions.
I worked with a palette of warm whites, aged linen, and three carefully chosen pieces of furniture that anchored each room. No accent wall. No statement lighting. Nothing that called attention to itself. The rooms needed to feel like they had always been this way.
"The house already knew what it wanted to be. My job was simply to listen — and then to have the courage not to add anything it didn't need."
Three choices that
defined everything.
key design decisions
Every project has a handful of decisions that determine the outcome. For Lincoln Park, these were the three that mattered most.
01.
02.
03.
The clients wanted new hardwood throughout. I convinced them to restore the original boards instead. Sanded, oiled, left to show their age. It changed the entire feeling of the ground floor — from aspirational to inhabited.
Keeping the original floors
The main reception sofa is in a deep tobacco linen that most people said was too dark for the room. It is the single most important piece in the house. It gives the room weight. Without it, everything floated.
One sofa, the wrong colour
We removed every ceiling fixture in the principal rooms and replaced them with floor lamps, picture lights, and a single reading lamp per seating area. The house now has no bad time of day.
No overhead lighting
the outcome
A home that finally
felt like theirs.
Six months after moving back in, the clients sent me a single message: "We've stopped wanting to change anything." That is the only measure of success I use.
The Lincoln Park Residence is not a dramatic transformation. There are no before-and-after photographs because the change is not visual — it is felt. The house now has a point of view. It knows what it is, and so do the people who live in it.