Show houses are unfailingly eye-catching—perhaps because designers, unburdened by client directives, are able to fully unleash their imaginations. This year’s crop was no exception. Here are 11 of the most compelling ideas we saw from San Francisco to New York City.
Mythology as muse
This year, designers took a cue from the tales of Ovid, Homer, and other ancient myths and legends. At the Kips Bay Decorator Show House Dallas, AD PRO Directory firm Christopher Architecture & Interiors paired stone statues of Apollo and Artemis with swaths of marble in the kitchen, giving the room a striking grandeur. In the house’s study, fellow AD PRO Directory designer Sarah Stacey transported visitors to medieval Bavaria with a monumental fireplace surround modeled after Hell’s Mouth. And for her “Atelier of Dreams” room at the San Francisco Decorator Show Case, Sabah Mansoor used wallpaper embellished with drawings of Ionic columns, Venus de Milo, and Nazars (evil eye emblems).
The ’70s are calling: Mirrors and metals are back!
Mirrors are often mere accessories, but Corey Damen Jenkins’s installation at the Kips Bay Decorator Show House New York made us pause and reflect. An ode to Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, the AD PRO Directory designer’s dining room featured a mantel crowned with an eight-by-six-foot mirror, the gargantuan glass amplifying the adjacent Baccarat crystal chandelier. Likewise, AD PRO Directory designer Avery Cox leaned an oversized floor mirror against one of the robin’s egg blue walls in her listening lounge at the Kips Bay Dallas edition.
Gleaming metal, another ’70s-era go-to, also found the spotlight. At the Flower Magazine Show House, Forbes Masters wrapped their glamorous pool lounge in a metallic botanical wall covering, bringing foil into 2025 with romantic flair. In Dallas, AD PRO Directory firm Yates Desygn incorporated a standout mesh ceiling fixture crafted from brass in the parlor. And the evening lounge from AD PRO Directory firm Mohon Interiors featured a sexy curtain of ShimmerScreen metal beads.
A focus on fireplaces
The Hell’s Mouth surround wasn’t the only standout fireplace we saw this year. Leyden Lewis’s salon at the Kips Bay New York edition featured an undulating fireplace surround inspired by Wabele—a fire-breathing mask in Senufo culture. Part of the AD100 talent’s recently unveiled collection for Trueform Concrete, the surround’s design “connects the hearth to this powerful ancestral symbol,” said Lewis, who deemed it “the face of the room, its expressive core.”
Other striking fireplaces that reminded us of the grounding influence of hearths included Doniphan Moore’s hand-painted lime-plastered fireplace by Ancient & Modern at Kips Bay Decorator Show House Dallas; Chad Dorsey’s striking fluted fireplace by Strike at Wow!house; Rachel Duarte’s contemporary brick fireplace flanked by bookcases at the Pasadena Showcase House of Design; and AD PRO Directory Designer Kelly Hohla’s rippling blue-and-gray fireplace surround at the San Francisco Decorator Showcase.
Why so serious? The triumph of whimsy
Even more formal settings benefit from bursts of playfulness. Consider the foyer at the Kips Bay Decorator Show House New York from AD PRO Directory firm Ovadia Design Group, where guests were greeted by cheeky tiger motifs in the Tai Ping carpet and front door. And to enliven the scullery and pantry at the Flower Magazine Show House, Rebecca Gardner of Houses & Parties embellished the scene with a garland of faux sausages and an assemblage of oversized traps for velvet mice. The wonderfully nonsensical world of Alice in Wonderland not only inspired Corey Damen Jenkins’s dining room at Kips Bay New York but also Duväl Designs’ secondary bedroom at the Flower Magazine Show House via a Lewis Caroll–esque wall covering created in collaboration with Paul Montgomery.
Unexpected flora
This year at the Flower Magazine Show House, we saw botanical inspiration growing in new directions. Designer Amanda Khouri said she wanted her cutting room to look as if it was truly the domain of a passionate gardener, collaborating with artist Justin Roberts of Walk the Willow to create a textured backsplash of handwoven willow boughs. “Because it was literally sticks woven by hand, it kept the room from feeling too perfect,” Khouri explained.
Other creative use of flora included the silk wall covering blooming with large-scale periwinkle peonies in David Mitchell Brown’s primary bedroom in the Kips Bay Decorator Show House Palm Beach and, in the pantry of the San Francisco Decorator Showcase, Willem Racké’s hand-painted mural of white blooms (a nod to 1920s French designer Armand-Albert Rateau). And at Lake Forest Showhouse and Gardens, AD PRO Directory firm Rebel House welcomed guests to its reception room with dreamy local wildflowers rendered in plaster. Further within, the greenhouse-esque gallery designed by Randy Heller featured a gorgeous live wisteria tree amid stately columns.
Leveling up indoor-outdoor settings
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Persephone, the Greek goddess of spring, was the starting point for Meg Lonergan’s neoclassical loggia at the Kips Bay Decorator Show House Palm Beach. Throughout the Houston- and Austin-based AD PRO Directory designer deftly blurred the lines between inside and outside. Take the setting’s cabana kitchen, with its custom plaster hood, plaid pink mosaic tiles, and lichen green breakfast table planted underneath intricate tracery. A 70-foot-long curtained wall, fabricated with Sunbrella and Kravet textiles by The Shade Store, added dramatic flair, while an Aronson Woodworks Ping-Pong table grounded the indoor-outdoor space in play. Elsewhere, a carved limestone pedestal seamlessly mingled with a curving Holland & Sherry sofa, and Authentic Provence dining chairs flaunt scalloped skirts.
Dramatic ceiling treatments
On the walls of Jardin Botanique, the dining room that Bierly Drake & Steele, Inc. designed for the Kips Bay Decorator Show House Palm Beach, Sanderson’s Fernery wallpaper hoists a daring green-on-black nod to 19th-century botanical drawings. Firm founders Lee Bierly and Chris Drake matched the wall covering with delicately pleated curtains from Kravet and an array of throw pillows. But the room’s real standout was the coffered ceiling, painted a glossy parrot green that popped against bright white architectural details.
Grandeur at work
Work took a luxurious turn in Leslie Lamarre’s moody office at the San Francisco Decorator Showcase. Lamarre, cofounder of San Mateo–based TRG Architecture + Interior Design, conceived the interior around the dramatic Timorous Beasties wall covering depicting a regal bumblebee. A meandering Kyle Bunting hide rug and a silky red limewash ceiling, painted by Noel Bouche, upped the indulgence ante. The star, however, had to be the one-of-a-kind parametric desk that organically morphed into the wall. Sanded, stained, and assembled by Dave Marcoullier Woodworks from nearly 170 individual pieces of Baltic Birch plywood, the piece was bolstered by a Coup D’Etat chair and Caste Design lamp. And at the Kips Bay Dallas show house, Shannon Bowers cloaked the walls of her dining room with theatrical champagne drapery, accentuated with a massive chandelier over the table.
Brazen pattern play
A former film producer, Los Angeles designer Julia Chasman couldn’t help but approach the library at the Pasadena Showcase House of Design like a fantastical film set. The interior’s original fireplace grounded the space, albeit spiffed up with Delft tiles from Petra Palumbo. Meanwhile, the enigmatic Creatures of the Night wallpaper from Zak + Fox backdropped a wooden bookcase, coated in Dunn-Edwards’ deep Cherry Cola hue. Visual Comfort’s Farfalle chandelier burst with butterflies overhead, while Peter Dunham Textiles’ Tuareg pattern infused instant energy into the space as a ceiling treatment. And on the East Coast, Tamara Feldman went all out with her Kips Bay New York bathroom, incorporating dramatically swirling marble, a backlit panel clad in a geometric print reminiscent of Christmas ornaments, and textiles emblazoned with rich emerald designs.
Designing in conversation with interiors past
Walking into the Lake Forest Showhouse, visitors were entranced by local designer Cynthia McCullough’s classical foyer accented in powder blue. Referencing the remnants of wallpaper left by Frances Elkins, McCullough took the jewel box space as her opportunity to pay tribute to the 20th-century visionary who spruced up the abode in the 1930s. McCullough wrapped the foyer in a pastoral Pierre Frey print featuring the garlands, pearls, and swans—motifs that echo in 3D throughout space with lamps, wall-hung plates, and objet. Most intriguing was the duo of mirrors from Ballard Designs that McCullough elevated with two complementary Schumacher wall coverings—a marbled Florentine variety and Mary McDonald’s Greco Stripe, which also swathed the ceiling.
Homing in on heritage
For the primary bedroom in Wow!house at Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, Tommaso Franchi, founder of London firm Tomèf Design, paid homage to his native Italy in an appropriately sumptuous fashion. A trifecta of Italian heritage brands often embraced in Franchi’s projects were united in the centerpiece Tiara bed. The bespoke creation crowned Bonacina’s kiss-shaped rattan headboard with a sleek Barovier&Taso Murano glass jewel and lush Fortuny velvet upholstered by French atelier Maison Phelippeau. The cinematic space was rounded out with creamy Phillip Jeffries silk walls—elegant yet understated enough to let the Tiara bed dazzle.
At Kips Bay New York, Ben Pentreath’s cheery drawing room took cues from English estates: The designer combined an Aesthetic Movement fireplace surround with an antique rug and tapestry, neoclassical antiques, and British midcentury art. And in Nashville for the Flower Magazine show house, we admired Sean Anderson’s multistory library, which boasted a sky-high bookshelf stacked with internationally sourced antique objets d’art.
