29 Oct Quiet Moments in a Wild Setting

There’s a lot of history in this land,” says interior designer William Peace about his clients’ home set between Livingston, Montana, and the north entrance of Yellowstone National Park. Surrounded by almost 60 acres of land that run alongside Mill Creek, the 25-year-old house and its accompanying 19th-century trappers’ cabin offer a relaxing escape for the California couple. It’s also close to their grandchildren. “It’s a special place,” Peace adds. “The clients wanted to feel the wilderness and the remoteness when they’re here.”

The rustic stone and timber front porch of the main house.

Peace, president of the eponymous firm, and his team worked with JLF Architects to support the clients’ vision of using design to evolve and elevate the house while honoring its original form. They also wanted to enjoy traditional Western living but with a fresh take and contemporary comforts. The design team met those requests by using a purposeful combination of local materials and contextual inspiration adorned with touches of European elegance. Peace’s firm redid everything from wall and ceiling finishes to furnishings and fixtures. They even updated the art collection to feature commissioned, modern, and iconic vintage pieces — all created by regional artists.

“This is a quieter experience than most homes,” Peace says of the 4,000-square-foot main house originally designed by JLF Architects. “It’s tucked into the woods in a protected area, so the design responds to that. These are interiors people want to be in when they’re in this wild, magnetic setting.”

Lush, natural materials and antique furnishings help anchor the expansive, light-filled great room. Two large paintings — a wolf portrait by David Frederick Riley and a bear with a wolf titled Guardians by Virginia E. Baude — bring color and drama to the space. Baude’s painting sits in a place of honor above the fireplace, surrounded floor to ceiling with native stone.

Memorable Materials

The design team’s approach to refreshing these interiors involved producing special moments within each space using a blend of imported, elegant antiques and modern furniture wrapped in naturally lush fabrics like mohair, wool, and smooth leather. One such moment is a Tom Gilleon painting of a Native American woman hanging above a 17th-century Italian Baroque walnut credenza adorned with midcentury stoneware and accompanied by a velvet footstool. This vignette, Peace says, set the tone for the entire house.

A Tom Gilleon portrait of a Native American woman paired with a 17th-century Italian credenza brings together pieces from different cultures, a design philosophy used throughout the house.

Peace and his team lined the ceilings in the foyer, kitchen, guest room, and screened porch with silvery gray reclaimed wood planks to bring the outside hues of clouds and snowcapped peaks indoors. The weathered wood also balances hard stone walls and floors. Curtains fall from ceiling to floor, offering visual and literal warmth, their colors and textures reflecting the blue-gray, deep brown, soft cream, and sage green of the outdoors. Pale rugs in tufted wool add a plush touch to the smooth finishes and oversized spaces. “These are materials from nature and meant to last,” Peace says. “They also stand up to the stronger materials — stone and hewn wood — from the architecture.”

Antique light fixtures and tables add elegance to the rustic foyer.

The corner kitchen links the entry foyer to the great room.

The team also added gray tones to the reclaimed wood timbers that support the vaulted ceilings in the airy great room. Plaster walls and ceilings, meanwhile, got recharged with brighter, lighter finishes. European antiques paired with chic contemporary furniture offer sophisticated counterparts to the more rustic finishes. Arranging the time-spanning pieces in a coordinating color palette helps generate a cohesive, quiet atmosphere. The dining area highlights this approach with an antique table and credenza with new leather chairs all done in the same warm chestnut tone.

A vintage Navajo rug brings bursts of color to the serene main bathroom.

“These subtle colors and textures create an understated elegance, and the natural materials form a serene background for furniture pieces, light fixtures, and art,” Peace says. “People come here to be outside, so we create interiors that complement the outdoors but do not compete with it.”

A 1970s highly lacquered goatskin coffee table sits between twin sofas covered in mohair velvet fabric from Peace’s Western Skies collection for Holland & Sherry.

Attention to Art

Along with selecting specific materials and furniture to grant their clients’ wishes, the interior design team curated an art collection embodying this special place. Most of the animals portrayed in the artwork adorning these walls can also be seen in the nearby wilderness. Paintings by regional artists were selected or commissioned as focal points throughout every room in the house and cabin. The tone-setting dramatic portrait of a Native American woman, for example, faces a bold modern work by David Frederick Riley of a wolf’s face that commands the wall across the great room.

The updated cabin has a sleeping loft above a kitchenette.

In addition, Riley was commissioned to do five original paintings, including a fox peering out across the primary bathroom. A mountain lion painting by Riley leads the way into a long gallery wall of art connecting the great room to the private bedroom spaces with vintage paintings and a subtle landscape by Clyde Aspevig. These provide calm counterparts to Riley’s audacious animal portrayals. The art collection further demonstrates how Peace and his team juxtaposed traditional with modern but blended them by selecting pieces in the same hues.

The one-room cabin renovated to what it might have looked like when built in the early 1800s, with a blend of antiques and natural materials.

Quiet Features

“Not everything can be the star of the show, so we have to decide what stands out,” explains Peace about their design strategy. “Take the primary bathroom. The lightness of the fox painting and bright colors in the 1920s Navajo rug help warm the atmosphere of the space, balancing the cool wood and marble finishes.”

A Tom Gilleon painting adds gorgeous jewel tones to the study in the main house.

In the kitchen, backsplashes in soapstone enhance the gray wood cabinets and ceilings and continue the outdoor-inspired palette. The highly polished finish contrasts with the surrounding rustic textures. The reclaimed wooden planks came from building exteriors, resulting in the more weathered look and bleached gray hues. Carrying the wood across the dropped ceiling offers a point of refuge between the vast vaulted ceilings in the adjacent great room and foyer. Peace’s team ensured the kitchen wasn’t overly matchy but still felt unified, so food and people could be the focal points.

Harmonizing colors that relate without matching, combining rustic materials with lush fabrics, and pairing antique with modern furniture make interiors throughout feel authentic and comforting without being heavy. Protective details are also applied to preserve the valuable art collection. Expansive windows all contain UV-resistant glass with blackout shades or curtains to shield art and furnishings from harsh sunlight and extreme temperatures when the owners aren’t in town.

The design team replaced plaster ceilings with soft gray reclaimed wood planks in the guest room and its adjacent screened porch, adding a sense of coziness to the vaulted spaces. Sliding glass doors link the rooms, allowing guests to feel like they’re sleeping outdoors.

Despite unpredictable weather and the clients’ tight timeline, Peace says working with them in close collaboration with the architects and contractors was a highlight of this project. He credits the couple with remaining open-minded about the design team’s ideas and trusting their process. “They wanted authenticity without being clichéd,” Peace says. “They live with and are inspired by the land around them. Whether the pieces we chose came from our country or other countries, they all have an authenticity of their own that created this serene story.”