Leslie Banker’s Rhode Island Home is Bursting with Color

By painting the inside of the built-in bookcases Benjamin Moore Chili Pepper, “they became their own component,” says designer Leslie Banker.

Banker’s living room is filled with memories: the ottoman with its hand-painted Peter Fasano fabric hails from her childhood house in Southampton, New York, the rug is an heirloom kilim, and the vintage chairs are from her husband’s parents.

To bring the three-season porch into the fold, Banker repeated the Benjamin Moore Chili Pepper color from the living room bookcase. Jean Prouvé’s Guéridon table and chairs from Vitra were repurposed from Banker’s first New York City apartment.

To play off the flowers in the primary bedroom’s Schumacher headboard and bed skirt, Banker found a Moroccan bedspread at Creel and Gow in New York.

Banker’s solution for handling the “enormous” upstairs bathroom was to select a larger-than-life wallpaper by Clarence House and accent it with a shower curtain custom made with Les Indiennes fabric.

Jane McNally Wright’s ram portrait presides over the guest bedroom, but the Matouk striped sheet “makes the room—you’d miss that stripe if it was not there,” says Banker.

Painted Farrow & Ball Babouche, the dining room pairs old perfume vessels with an heirloom birdseye-maple chest of drawers.

The home’s original stone wall frames a view of Narragansett Bay.

Continuity comes easily to LeslieBanker—she inherited an eye for it. Growing up in homes designed by her mother, Pamela Banker, a designer at Parish-Hadley Associates, certainly afforded her the knack. But the beauty of Banker is her ability to stand back, view the process, and explain what drives her decisions.

For example, she painted the dining room walls in her Rhode Island home a mellow Farrow & Ball Babouche yellow because she says the color emits a certain energy. “In other words,” Banker explains, “I want bubbly, effervescent dinner parties.” Imagine: a wall color that can banish boring table conversation.

That’s just one example of a decorator’s mind at work. In Banker’s world, complementary carpet colors can move you comfortably from room to room. Geometric patterns can make a suite deep within the house feel cohesively connected. Using her own home as the backdrop and with input from other designers, Banker shares her knowledge with the rest of us in her new book, Think Like a Decorator (Rizzoli 2023).

Banker didn’t plan on following in her mother’s footsteps. Trained as a writer, she was recruited by her mother to physically set up an office in 1999. Thrown into the thick of it, Banker found an affinity. In 2006, she and her husband purchased the 1890s-built coastal cottage. (They also own a home in New York City, where Banker’s firm is located.) Its quirkiness was a major draw. “It’s not a perfect house, but that’s part of the charm,” she says.

At about the same time, Banker inherited “seemingly fussy” wood furniture from her grandmother. “The house became a combo of old and new,” she says. “Actually, a room with only new furnishings would never work for me. You always need to add something with soul to give a house character.” Her advice to those lacking family heirlooms: attend an auction. But no matter the source, old must dialogue with new.

In Banker’s home, upholstery, rugs, and pillows continually converse. Colors are courageous and pop from unlikely places, and textures talk to each other. Banker doesn’t restrict dialogues to single rooms, though. She spreads them out. The daring mandarin red on the living room bookshelf repeats on the porch floorboards. And the dining room conversation-starting Babouche is matched in the living room pillows. It’s all meant to make you feel perky and, perhaps above all, perfectly at home.

Project Team
Interior design: Leslie Banker & Co.
Landscape design: PLACEstudio Landscape Design