A Coastal Home Reflects Maine’s Rugged Shoreline

In the great room’s casual dining area, a translucent light fixture that subtly alludes to beach glass illuminates a white-oak table surrounded by Bernhardt’s fully upholstered Casey chairs.

Down a hallway, past an Arteriors sconce and the solid mahogany front door, is Wild Rose, a photograph by artist Michael Kahn. Though Kahn is a lifelong Pennsylvania resident, he has deep ties to Maine.

To keep the great room all about the view, designer Janeen Arnold chose a quiet palette of ivories, which also provides a timeless neutral backdrop for the wife to decorate in different colors for various holidays. The steel-framed sliders recede into pockets, allowing complete communion between indoors and out. Tables in the living and dining areas allude to driftwood.

Arnold and Kitchen Cove Design Studio collaborated on the kitchen, which features an island painted a blue-tinted shade of gray and topped with quartz. Brass details show up throughout, including on the knobs of the two-tone Wolf range.

Maine Cabinet Company outfitted the butler’s pantry, and Light + Form Studio deployed adjustable task lighting concealed in a cove.

The Rutt Cabinetry bar in the great room echoes the bluish-gray kitchen island, while its metal mesh fronts suggest fishing nets and lobster pots.

French-style chairs and an arts and crafts-style chest impart historical touches that give the room greater visual depth, Arnold believes, than if you’d simply “popped in all modern forms.” Floral fabric connects the fauteuils to the landscape. A cowhide rug keeps things contemporary, as does the mirror, which evokes a porthole while complementing the curves of the table and Hinkley pendant.

The play of dark and light continues in the husband’s office with its midnight-blue Phillip Jeffries grasscloth wall and custom black cubby storage by TJ’s Fine Woodworking. The antiqued-glass iron-frame mirror reflects the seascape outside.

In order to integrate the massive tufted-leather bed from the clients’ previous home into the more tailored modern environment of the primary suite, Arnold grounded it with a dark traditional carpet from Loloi but enveloped the room in soothing neutral shades.

Arnold engaged Maine craftsman Tim Hill to build the primary bath’s custom his-and-her vanities that evoke waves and water in the subtle inward curve on the fronts. The dark wall highlights the cabinetry finish, which is meant to continue the driftwood theme.

The textured tile on the wall Arnold devised to give the tub privacy refers equally to waves and water and to beach sand ridged by the wind.

The primary suite’s bath is all about the movement of water; the tub’s form recalls the trough of a wave between two crests.

The shower stall also curves, its handmade tiles adding texture and shine.

When one couple decided to build a 4,500- square-foot primary residence on the dramatic coastline of Bath, Maine, they knew exactly what, or rather who, they
wanted—and what they didn’t want. Beach banalities were banished, and Salt of Maine Co. principal Janeen Arnold, who they had known through their daughter for years, was one of their first phone calls.

“She was young and had a fresh outlook, which is what we needed,” the husband says. “We wanted something open, airy, and bright.”

Arnold is a strong proponent of biophilic design, an influential movement that espouses the importance of connectivity to the natural environment, beginning with drawing one’s inspiration from the surrounding land. “The home is on the waterfront near oyster farms and also not too far from several inland farms,” Arnold explains. “So, I thought, ‘How can we express a coastal aesthetic in a modern, sophisticated way?’ ”

The answer is not what you’d expect. “People think of coastal as bright southern coasts,” says Arnold. “But Maine’s waters are often dark. They have a moody vibe.” It was also necessary to equally consider the region’s gray foggy days, hence spaces that move from light to dark and back again: an ivory-toned great room leading into a dining room swathed in Sherwin-Williams near-black Iron Ore; an inky black-and-midnight-blue home office opening into a creamy beige primary suite, and so on.

Nautical cliches? Verboten! Yet subtle references abound. “I was always thinking about how we could subliminally point to the rocky coast environment through colors, patterns, textures, and shapes,” says Arnold. To wit: battens on dining room walls that slyly nod to the walls of fishermen’s shacks (while also drawing the eye up with their verticality, making the ceilings feel taller). That same room’s round mirror vaguely evokes a porthole.

The great room’s casual white-oak dining table is reminiscent of driftwood. “I also tried to balance straight lines with movement and curvature,” notes Arnold. “You think of the movement of water and wind in coastal areas.” Note the curved tub chairs that swivel.

Lighting designer Grace Rote of Light + Form Studio helped call attention to some of that movement. “Light can bring a little touch of drama and make colors and textures pop,” says Rote. The tile wall Arnold installed to give the tub in the primary bath some privacy, for example, has “one-inch recessed punch lights at the bottom and the top that highlight the dimensional surface of the tile, which looks like waves,” explains Rote. (The tub and custom vanity fronts also undulate to recall water.)

“It was so well-thought-out ahead of time,” says the husband. Consequently, construction and installation went smoothly. And, he adds, “Everything about the home is appealing.” It wouldn’t feel half as appealing, of course, if the space was aesthetically out of sync with the rugged coastline right outside its windows. Nautical tropes need not apply.

Project Team 
Interior design: Salt of Maine Design Co.
Builder: TJ’s Fine Woodworking
Landscape design: Ted Carter Inspired Landscapes