Paint Your Masterpiece

The formal living room serves as the entry, so "it needed to look great when you walked in," says Howard. He painted the existing wall paneling Benjamin Moore's Mosaic Glass (485) and then commissioned artist Bob Christian to fill each frame with florals inspired by the works of 17th-century German botanist Basilius Besler, which in turn informed the multihued upholstery.

WHEN A WOULD-BE CLIENT first dialed Andrew Howard, her timing was so serendipitous that the Jacksonville, Florida, designer thought he was being pranked by someone in his office. Earlier in the day, he and his team had discussed what they hoped to work on next. "We were saying we'd love to find a project where we could do a granny-chic layering of patterns," he recalls. "I felt like we were starting to be in this rut of blue-and-white beach houses, and I was getting kind of tired of it." The decorating gods delivered: That very evening, he received a call from a woman who wanted him to infuse her St. Simons Island, Georgia, home with exuberant hues and lively prints-and lots of them. "We ended up meeting, and it was a match made in heaven. She was so fun to work with, so outside the box.

A lot of times, our clients push us to do things that we think are not our norm, which is great-it's what's fun about being a designer-but she was pushing us two or three steps in every single room," says Howard of the homeowner, who has since passed away.