Natural Selection
Most Parkites love nature and would prefer to be outside enjoying all of its splendor. When there’s no choice but to take shelter, however, local designers who decorate million-dollar spaces say there are plenty of budget-friendly ways for do-it-yourselfers to welcome nature into their living spaces.
Photography: Courtesy of DH Design Studio and Sticks and Stones
Matthew Dickamore is creative director at DH Design Studio, which designed all of Talisker Restaurant Group’s interior spaces, including The Farm, Red Tail Grill, and Talisker on Main. Dickamore suggests eliminating harsh, straight lines from design. “If you look at nature, it’s curved. It flows,” he says. “The key components are not straight. Man suggested the straight line, not nature.” A great example of incorporating natural flow is the curved partition at The Farm, constructed of end-grain wooden blocks set at various depths.
• Think wood for tables or chairs—beautifully grained, smoothed, and polished wood pieces can become natural works of art.
• Hanging mirrors opposite a window will add the illusion of size to a room and reflect what is outside the window, bringing the outdoors in.
• Sticks and Stones owner/designer Andrea Damiano is a fan of stick bundles of varying heights, perhaps knotted together with a wide piece of burlap and set in a glass vase with the base lined in river rocks. Often, she spray paints collected branches for an eye-catching, modern look. “Right now silver and gold metallics are big,” she says. “Red lacquer looks great, too.”
• On autumn hikes, Vicky Scheider of Park City Design brings home acorns from scrub oak, abundant on the area’s south-facing slopes, to place at candle bases. “Periodically switch your design elements out,” she suggests. “I’ll use pinecones in the wintertime and fruit in season. I’ll decorate with a bowl of fresh limes or lemons during the summer. The fabulous produce that we get from local farmers markets goes right in the middle of the counter—until it’s consumed.”
• Amateur photographers can personalize their space with high-resolution close-ups of nature. Think leaves, grasses, stones, or the white bark of an aspen tree, with its many unblinking eyes. Not much of a photographer? Dickamore suggests framing pictures or photographs from a favorite wall calendar. “I do that in my own house,” he says. “Don’t tell anyone.”
• Get items with personal meaning—old maps, a prized rock, an arrowhead—out of the dust-gathering shoebox and put them on display in frames or attractive glass-front shadow boxes from craft stores.
• Frames made of old barn wood lend a rustic, outdoorsy element to interiors. Dickamore has applied squares of gold leaf to barn wood frames with stunning results. Not only is it physically appealing, but “you feel that sense of history,” he says.
• Rock or salt slabs or even a piece of burlap sack in a tablescape can bring an organic feel to any interior, as do grass—as opposed to floral—arrangements. “Faux grasses and greenery have improved,” says Scheider. “The look is cleaner than it used to be.”
• Dickamore says color is a great way to bring the outside in. “Think about your favorite place,” he says. “Bring in the colors you see on your favorite trail. What are the colors that surround you when you ski? Or maybe you love Southern Utah, where the colors are orange. Bring it all in.”
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