Spec houses can be astonishingly gorgeous or incredibly bland. Problem is, the same well-heeled Hamptons buyer who wants move-in ready on Memorial Day also avoids cookie cutter designs in favor of something beautiful and unique.
The task of balancing a stunning, universally appealing interior — and exterior — with the sense that this place is one of a kind falls to the designer.
They have found ways to cope with the paradox. Some channel their own tastes, or try to channel those of the hoped-for buyer. Others pick neutral palettes letting other features perk up the tan or gray.
And though it’s easy to wonder if upholstery and sconces can sell a luxury second home, the stakes are high and the money is there if they do.
In their image
For designers who typically cater to specific clients, a spec home can be like a blank canvas for their brush. Instead of channeling a specific homeowner’s taste, “we are usually doing something that we would like ourselves,” veteran flipper William Cummings of New York-, Oslo- and Hamptons-based Heiberg-Cummings said.
The firm has become well known for its inventive and beautiful renovations of old buildings on the East End.
“For us, it becomes almost a design laboratory when we don’t have a client involved, and we can experiment with things that we don’t have the opportunity to do when we’re dealing with a client.”
Beach tones
Heiberg-Cummings’s projects have a Nordic feel, with natural wood as well as natural materials such as sheepskin, stone and fireplaces. Usually they have expansive kitchens with large eating spaces. The team always includes interesting extras, antique Turkish stone sinks, painted reclaimed wood or saunas (a nod to Bernt Heiberg’s Norwegian roots). Neutrals are prominent but textures add some personality.
But Hamptons neutral is different from city neutral. Designers have to account for the quality of light in the area and how well various shades appear in that light, Jennifer Mabley of Mabley-Handler said. She favors a “beach-chic palette of pale grays and blues and creams,” she said.
“People really come to the Hamptons for that relaxing, laid-back but very tasteful and chic Hamptons house.” Mabley-Handler works in the Hamptons, New York City and Palm Beach.
Heiberg-Cummings is particularly known for innovative, thoughtful exteriors that are a natural extension of their interiors. Even on a tiny Sag Harbor plot, they’ve carved out a small yard with a fountain, bluestone patio and freestanding sauna, all lit by gas lanterns. For another 0.14-acre Sag Harbor plot, they waved their Scandi magic wands and created a beachy feel, with a miniature gunite pool, beach grasses, and white pebbles.
Knowing the setting, as in the beachy Hamptons, is vital. “It’s always a marriage between the architecture of the house, where it’s located, the neighborhood, the place, for example. How do you marry a concept with that locality?” Cummings said.
Florida-based James Michael Howard’s motto for designing these sorts of homes comes from Winston Churchill: “My tastes are simple: I am easily satisfied with the best.”
For Howard, who has designed a number of extremely high-end turnkey spec homes in the Hamptons, the basics can’t be very basic.
“Very, very high quality from the rugs to the furniture to the accessories,” he said. “Never being satisfied with the pedestrian. How could we improve this? How could we make it much cooler, much better?”
One of the spec homes, in East Hampton, was recently purchased by Sylvester Stallone.
Marketing angle
Other designers try to imagine the potential buyer. What features will provide the wow factor that compels this particular type to buy: A gym? Cigar room? Golf simulator? Pet-washing station?
Many come back to uniqueness as the clear answer.
For New York- and Hamptons-based designer Elsa Soyars, that is the staircase. Soyars is known for her sculptural stairs, sometimes curved, sometimes with clear glass handrails.
The idea is to have something memorable and eye-catching.
“Just some pieces that are a little bit bolder,” she said.
She puts herself in the buyer’s shoes, trying to deliver a design that doesn’t need alterations to feel like home.
“The Hamptons clientele is pretty sophisticated,” she said “I don’t think they know what they want, but they know they don’t want something like everybody else has.”
For Howard, art can deliver that. He making large, striking, often abstract artwork centerpieces of many rooms. He says, “I don’t think like a spec builder,” he said. “I think like a designer, as if I was doing the house for a client, and that client happens to live in the Hamptons.”
Whatever their approach, spec home designers have to have common purpose with the home’s developer. And not every budget allows for sky-high design elements.
“A builder or a developer [we’re working with] on a house or a condo development…they want the buyer to walk in and feel like they’re home,” Austin Handler, principal of Mabley-Handler, said. (He is Mabley’s husband.) “That’s what developers have been coming to us for—to create interiors that elicit that response from the prospective buyers.”
In the end, though, all of the design work is to sell properties, and a stunning house is easier to sell than a badly designed house.
“I honor what I’m there to do, which is to add equity to a project, make it sellable,” Soyars said.