Home for Zen’s Ania Dunlop breathes new life into her home by marrying timeless elegance with a modern flair
Interior designer Ania Dunlop has toured over 30 houses in Westchester County, New York in her search for a “fixer-upper with potential,” before she settled on a Mediterranean-style home built in 2003, about an hour’s transit from the Big Apple.
“We were looking for a house with more space and a bigger backyard, and this house had everything we wanted: great scale and bones, a magnificent park-like ground and privacy,” remembers the founder of New York-based interior design studio Home for Zen.
“We saw the possibilities to transform it into a modern masterpiece, a family home with all the comforts and a great entertaining space for all our loved ones and friends to enjoy.”
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Within the area that has a highly educated population, prestigious universities, multinational headquarters, and iconic mansions like Rockefeller’s opulent estate, Kykuit; Dunlop opted for a gut renovation that gives her a streamlined space to craft something more natural and personal, not over-designed yet with exquisitely curated custom furniture, objects and art.
“Designing my own home was more complicated than doing it for a client because there was no client to provide feedback,” admits Dunlop. “I really have to trust my gut that all the decisions that I made are the right decisions.”