Airy spaces counterbalance bursts of Hollywood Regency maximalism in Brooke Riebeling’s Green Hills home.
Paige Rumore
Known for its glamorous tweak of the classics, Hollywood Regency arrived during the Golden Age of Hollywood of the 1930s, fittingly, and continues to look thoroughly modern when arranged with deft hands.
Riebeling’s 1940s home features hallmarks of the design aesthetic: Sumptuously tufted seating, bold colorways, faux bamboo, dramatic elements, Greek keyhole motifs, and over-the-top feminine touches. Still, the home retains enough neutral expanses of space to act as a foil to its bold attitude. Without this balancing act, the result could be dizzying. Instead, it’s achingly beautiful.
Riebeling shares the four-bedroom home with her husband and two young daughters. Its rooms feature furniture classics, such as Chippendale and Louis XVI chairs and a Chesterfield sofa. But like dashes of paprika, whimsical pieces punctuate every room. A mantle displays a lavender-colored bust candle of a young Napoleon in military uniform from Die Kers Arisan Candles. In the breakfast room hangs a vivid painting of a primitively depicted tiger and cub by the late French artist Henri Maik. On a coffee table sits a bunch of green marble grapes Riebeling nabbed at a yard sale for $10.
“I like to start with classic pieces that you’re never going to tire of,” she says. “But then I love to layer in something whimsical, something that’s patterned. I love to add little touches that make a space special.”
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Paige Rumore
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Paige Rumore
Decorating her home’s interior was life-changing for Riebeling, who was inspired to set up shop as an interior designer after the process (segueing from a public relations career). One year ago, she founded Brooke Riebeling Interiors, which feeds its Instagram audience a steady diet of stunning images from her various projects.
In choosing Hollywood Regency as her aesthetic, Riebeling walks unabashedly in the footsteps of greats. She’s a fan of Dorothy Draper, the movement’s high priestess, who bedecked The Greenbrier hotel with black-and-white checkerboard floors, exuberant colors, enough chintz for an English manor and wallpaper printed with oversized banana leaves. The hotel remains a place of pilgrimage for interior designers who want to bask in the successful aesthetic marriage of strong graphics and billowing forms.
Riebeling grew up traveling to Palm Beach, where her family has long maintained a vacation home. There, Hollywood Regency is a defining aesthetic, so she comes by it naturally.
Paige Rumore
“I love anything bamboo and rattan,” Riebeling says. “That Dorothy Draper vibe. In Palm Beach, you can use bamboo and rattan everything and put trellis on the walls.”
Like Draper, Riebeling loves a good print.
“I love wallpaper,” she says. “I would use it everywhere.”
Sophisticated wallpapers and fabrics are seen throughout her home, including those by Sister Parish and Scalamandré. In the tiniest powder room, Riebeling placed a Zoffany wallpaper called Peacock Garden.
“It has that little bit of a whimsical touch,” she says. “It’s chinoiserie with Chinese palaces and peacocks and monkeys. There’s even a cow in there. It makes the powder room this little jewel box.”
Riebeling’s unerring eye is on magnificent display in the dining room, where grasscloth walls in a pale greenish-blue provide a soothing backdrop to gorgeous pieces, including a Tritter Feefer buffet with feet finished in Greek keyhole motifs. The Louis XVI chair seats are upholstered inpebbled faux leather for practicality, while the backs are done in a gorgeous floral silk cotton. Underneath this tableau lies a leopard-print rug.
“I feel like leopard is a neutral,” Riebeling says, underscoring her aesthetic with that single defining statement.
Surely Dorothy Draper is nodding her approval from the great beyond.
Photography by Paige Rumore; styling by Alexandra Schmitt.