Colorful in Provincetown

Painted Benjamin Moore English Ochre, the front door of an otherwise traditionally hued Cape Cod home hints at the bold use of color found within.

The owner’s passion for purple is fully indulged with this Rubenesque reclining lounge chair, which contrasts the otherwise muted colors and patterns in the living room.

A bone-inlay table and animal-print pillows add an unexpected hint of the exotic to a home within shouting distance of the New England shoreline.

Even work is playful in this house: photographer Gray Malin’s image of Boston hangs behind a plum office desk framed perfectly by a pair of added sliding glass doors.

Blue and white are staple colors in coastal decor, but Shor Home Furnishings & Interior Design turns it up to eleven with these vivid Sherwin-Williams Loyal Blue kitchen cabinets juxtaposed with an otherwise neutral background.

A second-floor landing gets a little gallery flair with a three-dimensional boat sculpture by Cape Cod artist Maralyn Menghini. The lanterns are antiques.

The primary bedroom is more aligned with traditional beach-house decor; a midcentury swivel chair by Calligaris and a swirling Arteriors pendant add character.

The nautically themed guest bedroom draws texture from the Ralph Lauren wallpaper and the Coaster banana-leaf headboard, while the pipe-smoking sailor on the deco pillow provides a bit of quirky P-town whimsy.

A long, narrow primary bathroom takes its inspiration from New York’s subway stations; patterned marble tile and countertops pair with nickel and white-glass pendants.

Waterworks bath fixtures complement a porthole mirror flanked by caged industrial light fixtures by Visual Comfort; the decorative flowers on the shelf have purple petals, of course.

There is a well-known palette of colors commonly used to evoke themes of shore and sand when designing home interiors in a coastal community like Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Purple, suffice to say, is not among them.

As one might guess from the name, Shor Home Furnishings & Interior Design is no stranger to the sea. When called upon to reimagine the interior of a late-nineteenth-century home built in classic coastal colonial style, however, some piquant purples found a place amid the sand-toned rugs, framed fish and wave art, and blue textured wall-paper reminiscent of rippled water.

“The clients have a modern sensibility,” says interior designer Herbert Acevedo. “They wanted something nautically inspired but not with a heavy hand. They just wanted a place to relax and entertain in an uncomplicated way.”

“Purple,” Acevedo admits, “is not something we normally work with.” But the owners were passionate about the hue, and the ocean isn’t the only inspiration to be found in Provincetown. The community at the northern tip of Cape Cod is famed as America’s oldest continuous art colony; onetime P-town denizen Jackson Pollock would likely approve of Acevedo’s color choices for an East End home that’s closer to the downtown gallery district than the beach.

The refresh mostly leans on what Acevedo calls “modern coastal” furnishings with clean lines and organic fabrics that, yes, are very much at home by the sea: wool, cotton, and sisal. The nautical wall on the second-floor landing features a mostly traditional arrangement of blues and grays, with a pair of oars for accent and a wreath made of model boats by artist Maralyn Menghini for a sense of place. Carpenter Liam McCooe added a new island and coffee bar in the kitchen and built-in cabinetry in several rooms to further customize the space.

But then there’s that admittedly voluptuous purple chair by Vitra that Acevedo placed in the living room, and a plum office desk, also crafted by McCooe, that boldly faces the main living space through a pair of added sliding glass doors. The orange front door sends the message to visitors that this isn’t your usual Cape summer home, though even this attention-grabber can’t
compete with the Sherwin-Williams Loyal Blue kitchen cabinets.

Given all that, Acevedo says the key to the project actually lies in some subtlety. “We’ve never really painted an entire interior all white before, but it’s just fresh and light, and it contrasts anything you put in front of it,” he says.

Project Team
Interior design: Herbert Acevedo, Kevin Miller, Shor Home Furnishings & Interior Design