Show houses are unfailingly eye-catching—perhaps because designers, unburdened by client directives, are able to fully unleash their imaginations. This year’s crop was no exception. Here are 11 of the most compelling ideas we saw from San Francisco to New York City.
Mythology as muse
This year, designers took a cue from the tales of Ovid, Homer, and other ancient myths and legends. At the Kips Bay Decorator Show House Dallas, AD PRO Directory firm Christopher Architecture & Interiors paired stone statues of Apollo and Artemis with swaths of marble in the kitchen, giving the room a striking grandeur. In the house’s study, fellow AD PRO Directory designer Sarah Stacey transported visitors to medieval Bavaria with a monumental fireplace surround modeled after Hell’s Mouth. And for her “Atelier of Dreams” room at the San Francisco Decorator Show Case, Sabah Mansoor used wallpaper embellished with drawings of Ionic columns, Venus de Milo, and Nazars (evil eye emblems).
The ’70s are calling: Mirrors and metals are back!
Mirrors are often mere accessories, but Corey Damen Jenkins’s installation at the Kips Bay Decorator Show House New York made us pause and reflect. An ode to Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, the AD PRO Directory designer’s dining room featured a mantel crowned with an eight-by-six-foot mirror, the gargantuan glass amplifying the adjacent Baccarat crystal chandelier. Likewise, AD PRO Directory designer Avery Cox leaned an oversized floor mirror against one of the robin’s egg blue walls in her listening lounge at the Kips Bay Dallas edition.
Gleaming metal, another ’70s-era go-to, also found the spotlight. At the Flower Magazine Show House, Forbes Masters wrapped their glamorous pool lounge in a metallic botanical wall covering, bringing foil into 2025 with romantic flair. In Dallas, AD PRO Directory firm Yates Desygn incorporated a standout mesh ceiling fixture crafted from brass in the parlor. And the evening lounge from AD PRO Directory firm Mohon Interiors featured a sexy curtain of ShimmerScreen metal beads.
A focus on fireplaces
The Hell’s Mouth surround wasn’t the only standout fireplace we saw this year. Leyden Lewis’s salon at the Kips Bay New York edition featured an undulating fireplace surround inspired by Wabele—a fire-breathing mask in Senufo culture. Part of the AD100 talent’s recently unveiled collection for Trueform Concrete, the surround’s design “connects the hearth to this powerful ancestral symbol,” said Lewis, who deemed it “the face of the room, its expressive core.”
Other striking fireplaces that reminded us of the grounding influence of hearths included Doniphan Moore’s hand-painted lime-plastered fireplace by Ancient & Modern at Kips Bay Decorator Show House Dallas; Chad Dorsey’s striking fluted fireplace by Strike at Wow!house; Rachel Duarte’s contemporary brick fireplace flanked by bookcases at the Pasadena Showcase House of Design; and AD PRO Directory Designer Kelly Hohla’s rippling blue-and-gray fireplace surround at the San Francisco Decorator Showcase.
Why so serious? The triumph of whimsy
Even more formal settings benefit from bursts of playfulness. Consider the foyer at the Kips Bay Decorator Show House New York from AD PRO Directory firm Ovadia Design Group, where guests were greeted by cheeky tiger motifs in the Tai Ping carpet and front door. And to enliven the scullery and pantry at the Flower Magazine Show House, Rebecca Gardner of Houses & Parties embellished the scene with a garland of faux sausages and an assemblage of oversized traps for velvet mice. The wonderfully nonsensical world of Alice in Wonderland not only inspired Corey Damen Jenkins’s dining room at Kips Bay New York but also Duväl Designs’ secondary bedroom at the Flower Magazine Show House via a Lewis Caroll–esque wall covering created in collaboration with Paul Montgomery.
Unexpected flora
This year at the Flower Magazine Show House, we saw botanical inspiration growing in new directions. Designer Amanda Khouri said she wanted her cutting room to look as if it was truly the domain of a passionate gardener, collaborating with artist Justin Roberts of Walk the Willow to create a textured backsplash of handwoven willow boughs. “Because it was literally sticks woven by hand, it kept the room from feeling too perfect,” Khouri explained.
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