There’s nothing like spending time in your house to make you face the fact that a room needs to change.
Text by Marisa Sandora
Design by Fiori Interior Design
Photography by Wing Wong
Lisa Balsam had hated the way her den looked almost from the minute she and her husband, Bruce, created the room as part of an addition to their Tenafly colonial in 1990. “It was decorated in kind of a modern way, and it didn’t match the rest of the house, which was more traditional,” she remembers. “It was really awful. Clearly, I should never decorate on my own.” But it wasn’t until a few years ago, when Balsam broke her ankle and was stuck in the house for weeks, that she finally decided to do something about it. “I said, ‘Enough with this den.’ So I started looking for decorators.”
Enter Terri Fiori of Fiori Interior Design in Wyckoff, who was tasked with bringing the space into the 21st century. “It’s a very traditional-style home, but the addition was out of the ’80s. It didn’t blend well, so I wanted to design that room to be more transitional,” she says. First Fiori eliminated the skylights, wall-to-wall carpet, track lighting and a wall of built-in shelves, which were overflowing with collectibles. She and Balsam edited the tchotchkes and put what remained in a new mirrored-back cabinet from Old Biscayne Designs in a greige metallic finish that now anchors the room.
Balsam’s favorite thing about the new design is the bluish-green chaise lounge that sits in a cozy corner with a faux tortoise-shelltopped end table.
“I love to sit and read on the chaise and look out on the greenery in the backyard,” she says. “It’s a peaceful, calming room.”
Fiori also redid the powder room, suggesting the Balsams steal about a foot of space from the den to enlarge it just enough for a bigger sink. Next she added wainscoting, glazed the ceiling in a copper color, hung taupe linen wallpaper and installed mosaic tile on the floor in similar shades. Balsam especially loves the teardrop glass chandelier. “The room is small, but Terri said she’d make a little jewel box out of it, and she did,” she says.
Yes, Balsam waited years to tackle the addition, but now she’s on a roll. “Terri ended up redoing the whole first floor,” she says. “And maybe next year I’m going to have her do my master bedroom.”