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Carter and Chris Dawson have been collecting artwork for as long as they've been together. The partners in Red River Investments have ties to Tennessee and Louisianashe's a Nashville native, while he hails from Baton Rouge; they also own a second home in New Orleans. Both areas are strongly reflected in their repertoire of modern paintings, which have been carefully curated from galleries and studios across the South.
Incorporating the couple's existing pieces into a more contemporary design scheme was at the front of interior designer Meg White's mind when she stepped in to make over their outdated 1920s Parmer Park home. With so many paintings to factor into the overall plan, it was no small feat: White broke down the home, putting the pieces of the design puzzle together room by room. Carter had just onebigrequest.
'I wanted neutral with pops of color because the art really needed to pop,” Carter explains. 'I wanted the art to be the feature and not competing with the room.”
So White started with the walls. When the Dawsons bought the house five years ago, every room was a different color: eggplant, yellow, green, orange. Carter asked White to choose a single neutral shade, which they then used throughout the house so they had a blank slate. After that initial facelift, the couple and their two children lived in the home as is for a few years until eventually tackling the bigger picture.
'We love old homes,” Carter says. 'We loved the house for all the windows. And we had wonderful living space, but we needed functionality, mainly the storage.”
The Dawsons began with a kitchen renovation, then a 1,500-square-foot addition in the back, which included a screened-in porch, patio, and upstairs apartment. Next, they moved the driveway to the opposite side of the house and built a garage. After the construction was complete, White came back in and got to work. The Dawsons have also long been antique collectors and already owned a number of pieces they wanted to use in their home, like a 17th-century French dining room table. But the problem for them, Carter says, was figuring out how to balance this love for the old with a passion for the new.
'I love the blend of contemporary and antiques. We have gone and looked for pieces, like the antique game table in the living room, which we knew we wanted. But where do we put it in the house?” she says. 'Meg was able to figure out how to work everything in and arrange it.”
Aside from creating a fusion that seemed both deliberate and cohesive, White had the added challenge of selecting fabrics and upholstery that could stand the test of timeand the Dawsons' young children.
'We have a 12-year-old, a 9-year-old, and a really muddy dog. That's what I struggled with: What are fabrics that give the sophistication that I want but that are also family-friendly?” Carter says. 'Meg's been really good about finding those fabrics that are wearable and work really well with kids and dogs.”
White says to counteract the inevitable wear and tear, she chose charcoal hues, velvet upholstery, colors that blend in with the floors, fabrics that don't show spills, reclaimed wood that's durable, and glass-top surfaces that wipe easily. For the overall aesthetic, she also had to strike that delicate balance between using no color and adding too much, since the walls are white and the Dawsons' art collection is bright and bold.
'You don't want to have everything be white, so I wanted to incorporate color without being a rainbow of crayons,” White says. 'At the same time, with so many antiques, you don't want it to feel old-fashioned, so each room has a mix of old and new. We wanted the art to blend in but the color to be pulled out from those pieces.”