As their title implies, “spec” homes are based on speculation about what buyers will need and want, depending on the demographics of a region. Generally, this gives them a bad rap. People tend to think of them as plain vanilla, cookie-cutter residences devoid of character. But a so-called spec home that sprawls over 11,000 square feet, accommodates five bedrooms and nine and a half baths, and sits on a verdant acre of prized McClean, Virginia land just a stone’s throw from the nation’s capital? Well, the term necessarily experiences a kind of apotheosis that shatters conventional thinking.
This extraordinary exemplar was a project of custom luxury home builders Artisan Builders, who brought in designer Kristin Harrison early on to make sure its interiors equaled the high quality of the structure, a stone-and-wood manse capped by a standing-seam metal roof that gives it the visually rustic character of vernacular farm buildings without sparing a single expense.
How does one approach designing a home without a specific client for whom to design? “It’s hard because you’re kind of in the dark,” concedes Harrison. But she and the folks at Artisan created a working client profile to guide them. “We landed on a younger family who was either from the area or moving here,” she explains. “In D.C., there are lots of events and dinner parties, so we assumed it would be a house for entertaining, probably purchased by an entrepreneur or big corporate executive. D.C. is a transient place. People come here to work for the government or sports teams and leave after a few years.” (Or a change of administrations.)
To make their hypothetical clients feel comfortably at home in such a potentially cavernous structure, Harrison continues, “The materials and furnishings had to make it feel warm and cozy.” That meant miles of white-oak plank flooring, more wood on the slat ceilings of the kitchen, breakfast area and family room, and still more outfitting the exquisitely crafted millwork for which Artisan is known. There were also areas that incorporated thin 1950s-style gray interior brick. “There are a lot of beautiful Craftsman- style homes in the area,” observes Harrison, who settled on an ideologically complementary modern genre to relate it to the neighborhood. “We wanted it to be very clean, almost Scandinavian.”
Tapping Boxwood Home Staging to order the furniture, Harrison then layered in texture to ramp up the sense of enveloping tactility. All rugs, for instance, are either vintage or dyed vintage, many from Passerine Home. Unglazed ceramic lamps bring in raw clay elements. Hide accents – the rug in the office, a bench in the primary suite – stay within the neutral palette but heighten the sensory experience still more. Even paint finishes were textured (the nightstands in the primary) or introduced subtle notes of color (the green butler’s pantry). Curved furniture silhouettes softened the orthogonality of the architecture as well.
And guess what? The house seemed to conjure up its own imagined client. Jeffrey Skoll, the Montreal-born billionaire who was eBay’s first president and now is a philanthropist and part-owner of the professional ice hockey team the Washington Capitals, “didn’t change a thing,” says Harrison. “He bought it fully furnished. The goal was to make it as easy as possible for someone to move in.”
Small wonder, really. The thoughtfulness and craftsmanship lavished on this “spec” home are beyond exceptional. “The amount of time we spent looking at mood boards and furniture when we didn’t even know who the client would be was a fascinating process,” declares Harrison. “It doesn’t look like you’re five miles from D.C. It looks like you’re somewhere else, which was the whole point of the house.”
Photography by Peak Visuals.
Like what you see? Get it first with a subscription to aspire design and home magazine.