Chad Dorsey Design

Blue Bell

Private Residential

The concept for this house was a European country estate on a somewhat small city lot.

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Some of the best client relationships are with friends. I met a couple of mine in a running group more than a decade ago just as my former house in Dallas was put back onto the market by its new owner. I told them to go look at it as a good example of my work. They came back the next Monday and said they had put in an offer! After seven years living there, they were ready to do an entirely new project, so they bought some property in the prestigious Highland Park neighborhood and called me to design and build their home—both architecture and interiors.

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Designer's notes

The concept for this house was a European country estate on a somewhat small city lot. Its architectural details blur the lines between traditional and contemporary while its interiors skew modern, though the clients asked me to push them beyond the classic forms and blue palette usually in their design wheelhouse. To achieve this, we went room to room working with different shades within the same color range and mixing antique, contemporary, and bespoke furniture pieces with fun fabrics and wall coverings, like the dining room’s de Gournay scene, the perfect backdrop for the couple’s beloved dining table.

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In my projects, I like to repeat materials in different spaces throughout the home to give it a more cohesive feel. The clients had loved the limestone flooring we had used in their previous house so in this one’s entry, kitchen, and family room, large slabs of it cover a lot of space. It’s really easy and looks really great. A lot of the millwork is cypress, as are the doors and an exterior façade. And we used timber posts and lintels to create cased openings between the rooms with a historic country house feel.