After returning from maternity leave, designer Ashley Beaumier took on a project that began with a text and led to a cross-country flight to Boca Raton. Home to a vibrant woman starting a new chapter, her vision centered on crafting a space that felt effortlessly elegant, inviting, and lived in. Captured by Gabriel Volpi, the finished home strikes a thoughtful balance, layered and personal, with coastal undertones and a sense of sophistication woven throughout.
From Ashley Beaumier…My client reached out when I was just about to return from maternity leave with my first child at the beginning of 2024. She was relocating from the Northeast to Boca Raton, looking for a fresh start in a peaceful cul-de-sac in Stratford Green, a development within the Woodfield Country Club. Having taken a step back from design for a few months, I was eager to dive back in, but also a little anxious about how I’d balance it all, especially from the other side of the country. After a call and a few texts exchanged, I was on a flight to Florida a few weeks later.
It might have been the fact that my client, a 64-year-old style-savvy mother of four, already had three daughters, but when I flew down to meet her for the first time, her warm, maternal nature made it feel like I had known her for ages, she respected my profession but also treated me as her own. We’re both just over 5-feet tall and laughed at the realization when she picked me up from my hotel. Her first words were, “I thought you were taller,” and I laughed out loud, having thought the same. From there we got on right away, touring her soon-to-be home and discussing her wish list over glasses of Sancerre.
Spending much of her childhood visiting Boca, she was excited to officially have a home there but wasn’t looking for your typical Boca interior—not too coastal, but not too minimalist or sleek either. While she had a few requests and a handful of pieces to bring with her, including the tiger rug in the foyer, she really trusted my vision to transform a dated and somewhat sterile interior into a serene and warm respite. The home needed to function both as a place of pause for my client between travels, but also as a kid-friendly and welcoming home for her children and grandchildren to visit.
The initial scope included selecting a new paint color for the interior, furnishings throughout, and renovating the primary bathroom, but as most renovations go, we ended up touching almost every room as the project unfolded. The biggest challenge was creating intimate and purposeful moments in an angular open floor plan with marble floors throughout. We pored over iterations of the living and dining area before landing on a layout that included a non-traditional dining banquette tucked into a two-story bay window, a secondary dining table and chairs to serve the bar area we constructed in an unused area of the room, and a loungey living area grounded by the addition of a custom fluted limestone fireplace and floor-to-ceiling window treatments.
Each space was so drastically transformed that it’s hard to pick a favorite, but if I had to choose, it would be the primary bath—another space that required hours of space planning to correct odd architectural details from the original build, maximize function, and create a spa-like feel. Early on in the design process, my client fell in love with the blue tiles in the shower, and the rest of the palette was built from there. With a fondness for mid-century design, we introduced a walnut vanity that provided the perfect amount of warmth, finished with a Breccia marble top that we sourced for months.
The overall timeline really dragged out due to some unforeseen discoveries during demo, but the end result was absolutely worth pushing through the various challenges we faced. After installing the finishing touches, my client graciously opened her home to me to stay in for the photo shoot, really allowing me to take in all the moments we’d created and curate the perfect shot list. It’s one thing to complete an install and be satisfied with how everything turned out, but another to be able to come back months later, stay in the home, and truly get a sense of not only what you’ve created aesthetically, but also the feelings and experience that each space evokes.
Discover the talent behind the story… Interior Design: Beaumier Interiors · Photography: Gabriel Volpi · General Contractor: Craig Powers · Cabinetry: Ultimate Kitchen and Bath
