A beach house can be a getaway, a sanctuary, a gathering place for friends and family. For a pair of empty nesters who built their dream beach house on a grassy Brant Beach dune, it would be all these things and, eventually, one more: their primary residence. Given that multiplicity of purposes, the home’s interior designers, Donna and Victoria Grimes—who worked with the owners from the planning stage onward—faced a special challenge: how to create a space that would say “escape” and “home” in the same breath.
“Beach houses have to be practical,” says Donna Grimes, whose offices are in Ship’s Bottom on Long Beach Island. “But if it’s going to end up being your primary residence, a beach house also has to have all the great elements you’d want in a year-round home.” At the Brant Beach house, those elements include an entire floor dedicated to guests and visiting family, a spacious kitchen with a 14- foot island, loads of custom-designed features and finishes that are as elegant as they are hard-wearing. They also include banks of windows designed to take in the spectacular dune and ocean views.
In fact, the Grimes’ design was always animated by the need to allow those views to take center stage. The palette throughout is a soft blend of blue and sand—the designers’ goal was to make it feel “soothing”—but that doesn’t mean it’s bland or uninteresting. The large sectional sofa in the great room, for instance, may appear solid blue from a distance, but close up it reveals a subtle warp and weft of blues and whites. And while the kitchen is light and bright, the cabinets are actually a creamy beige, with a brushstroke finish that makes the beige feel fresh and contemporary. “That’s one of the things that I love about the house,” says Grimes, “because right now every other construction we’re doing has a white kitchen with a white-and-gray quartz countertop.” In this kitchen, the countertops are indeed quartz, but they comprise a pin-dot mixture of gray, beige and white with a concrete-like finish. Eschewing the ubiquitous white subway-tile backsplash, the designers instead chose a frosted glass tile in a subtle green that calls to mind tumbled sea glass. The color, says Grimes, is picked up in the cushions of the metal and woven-wicker barstools.
While the views out the windows provide an ever-changing backdrop, the design draws the eye inside with a series of arresting architectural and design features. The great room includes an inset bar area that was originally intended to be a large closet. “The owner asked if there would be space for a bar,” says Grimes, who looked at the house plans and immediately knew the designated closet space would be perfect for shelves and a counter.
Another of the home’s most eye-catching architectural touches is the stair railing. Constructed of poplar and painted white, it has the feel of a sophisticated ranch fence, and, says Grimes, it’s a favorite feature of the homeowners and their guests—though it almost didn’t happen. “Nobody wanted to build it,” she remembers, because it was so out of the ordinary. The designers, who were passionate about it, pressed on and finally found a willing craftsman. The house is filled with custom-designed elements, from the sleekly contemporary bar cabinetry to the knotty pine range hood that adds a warm note to the kitchen. It’s obvious that this house is one of a kind.
What’s less than obvious is the house’s practical side. The owners have a pair of energetic dogs and two sons in their 20s who visit often. And as passionate cyclists, nature lovers and beach walkers, they’re likely to drag in a fair amount of sand and dirt. Add water—from the nearby Atlantic and the backyard pool—and you have the potential for a permanent scrim of grit. To ensure everything about the house continues to shine in spite of hard use, the designers installed vinyl flooring throughout. “It’s a high-end vinyl,” says Grimes, “so it looks absolutely amazing.” When visitors learn what it’s constructed of, they’ll often bend over to run their hands over the floor to make sure it isn’t really wood. Some remain unconvinced.
So what do you do when you can’t use wood planking on the floors? You put it on the ceiling—which is exactly what the designers did in the great room. Like wood flooring, it adds warmth to the room, which otherwise— with its white walls and large windows—might seem overly chilly. “With the high ceilings and all that white, and the sun and the reflection,” Grimes notes, “the wood ceiling warms up the room without being too warm.”
At present, the peripatetic homeowners—who have an apartment in Philadelphia and another near New York City—consider the beach house more of a base of shifting operations than a home. But when they finally make the transition to living in the house full time, it will be more than ready to embrace them, thanks to a design that magically melds custom and comfort.