"Congratulations," I said, "What should we do to celebrate?" She looked me square in the face and said "Color." And so we did.

This was a second residence for my client in a posh downtown high-rise right in the middle of Austin's downtown. She wanted a fun, feminine place to entertain, and function as a vibrant dose of whatever-the-hell-she-wants-to-do. Luckily, this is my specialty. For the living area, the sofa was the first item chosen, and functions as a touchstone for all other furnishings, lighting, and art used in this room. Admittedly, I was concerned when I saw she was set on the sofa, because I could see an ordinary accompaniment of unremarkable white lacquer furniture and other conservative choices following in its footsteps. I needn't have worried. Here is the space very early on.

One afternoon, my client casually threw me this gem, "Listen, I'm going out of town for a month, and if you want to stay here while I'm gone, go ahead." I thought,"F*** yes I would love to stay in your fancy downtown condo and play Posh Spice for a few weeks."

WE'RE GOOD FRIENDS NOW, BUT AT THE TIME I WAS TRYING NOT TO SWEAR LIKE A SAILOR IN FRONT OF A CLIENT. SO INSTEAD I SAID "I'LL PAINT YOUR WALLS."

The bold blue of the living room wall might have been a disaster if we weren’t able to take it and run with it. Shock ensued when I presented the possibility of a bright, nearly Kline blue accent wall to my client and she was as enthusiastic about the color as I was. The choice is bold and right, and the space is made better for it. Try to imagine any other color for this space and it falls short of this sapphire magnificence.

I used the spectrum of color in the Slim Aarons photograph to lead me to the grass green zebra pillows and continued the devil-may-care sensibility with the accessories. The geometric print of the pair of purple lounge chairs gets an extra punch by a similar geometric circle variant in the wallpaper on the opposite side of the room, shown here:

This wallpaper was a glorious accident. I love wall treatments. I have painted and wallpapered every shitty rental apartment I have ever had, sacrificing the deposit in the name of style. And for this project, I suggested temporary wallpaper, which my client ordered. However, when I arrived for the installation, we discovered the wallpaper she ordered was not temporary but the real-deal, requires-paste wallpaper. And the pattern was not available in a temporary version. So I thought about it for 20 seconds and said

“I LOVE THIS. WE ALREADY PAINTED YOUR DEPOSIT INTO OBLIVION. TAKE ME TO HOME DEPOT FOR WALLPAPER PASTE."

We finished at 5 a.m.