Although this Pepper Pike ranch was built in the late ’80s, it boasted many features of midcentury modern architecture: a spacious open floor plan, pitched ceilings and plenty of windows that filled the space with natural light.
“The home almost asked for it,” says Linda Mauck Smith, owner of Blulens Design.
So when the homeowner, who had developed an affinity for midcentury modern design while growing up with her architect father, asked her to liven up her living room, Smith knew just what to do.
The Shaker Heights-based designer started with white, painting the walls and ceilings that color to enhance the appearance of the room’s size and height.
The move provided a clean, bright backdrop for her indigo, gray and brown color scheme — one that exemplifies the quiet, restful shades used in the midcentury modern period’s earliest stages.
Smith then turned her attention to transforming the fireplace into the room’s focal point. She enlisted a local artist to handcraft 24-by-24-inch concrete panels, then mounted them on the entire wall right up to the firebox.
“If you go and look at midcentury homes, the fireplace was often built with the house to be important,” Smith says.