Here Comes the Sun

Claudine Claus Wheeler's living room, a separate building behind the main house, is her place for quiet reading as well as for formal entertaining. She and her husband, Todd, already owned the wing chairs, which Alison Spear upholstered in Rogers & Goffigon polished linen, and the antique chaise lounge, re-covered with Scalamandré damask. To balance traditional and modern, Spear added an Emile sofa in Great Plains Soiree silk, both from Holly Hunt, a custom yellow-lacquered side table, and a Metropolis cocktail table by Jeff Newell for Newell Design. The richly patterned Velvet Oushak rug is from Odegard.

For the dining room, a window-wrapped rectangle capped by a peaked roof, Spear instantly rejected the kind of tatami-mat minimalism that less-imaginative decorators might have chosen to complement the pure geometry of the space.