Blue. That’s the single, colorful word that comes to mind when the interior design of beach houses is brought up.
The hue, after all, is the most logical—and stereotypical—election because it conjures the water lapping softly against the shores of the sandy beach.
When Leah Hook, the founder and principal designer of Gray Oak Studio, was brought on board before construction began for a new clapboard beach house on the one-road-in, one-road-out Plum Island, she knew she wanted to lean into the blues but in an all-encompassing manner that brings home the water theme in a sublime, yet subtle, way.
The idea of home and family is very important to the owners, a couple with four sons, the youngest of whom is in junior high school. The wife grew up going to the Plum Island beaches, and her father owns the property next door.
They envisioned a place where the family and large groups of friends could hang out without a care in the world.
To come up with her color scheme, Hook looked to the other houses in the community, whose ocean-facing pastel pinks, mints, and light blues complement the soft and sandy greys of the salt marshes.
And to the couple’s preferences: They happen to love blue.
Hook’s beach-house blues, against a neutral palette of ivories and beiges that blend with the sand that inevitably gets tracked inside, run the spectrum from pale blue-gray to bright sky blue to midtone marine to deep navy.
“We didn’t want to hit anyone over the head with ‘this is a beach house, it’s near the water,’” Hook says. “So every room is a different spin on blue. It was important that we not pick one shade and that we had fun with all the versions of blue.”
Hook reserved the boldest blues for the kitchen, living room, and guest room of the three-bedroom house.
A set of traditional-style chairs, painted navy, hugs a circular table off the open-plan kitchen, and a pair of sink-into swivel chairs in the living room repeats the color.
The kitchen island, as well as some of the room’s cabinets, chime in with a chambray blue that unites the spaces.
Navy reappears in the two nightstand chests in the guest bedroom, which also has a chair that’s painted sage green and reading lights with sky-blue shades that have a slight nautical feel.
Its bed has a woven headboard, a feature that Hook calls “fun and textural.”
The most muted shades are reserved for the primary bedroom, where most of the color is conveyed through the bedclothes. The vaulted ceiling, which Hook paneled in natural cedar, works with the blues to warm up the white walls of the space.
Navy also shows up in the sons’ bath, which incorporates a circular mirror in a deep-blue frame over the sink, ocean blue tile in the shower, and green, blue, and white penny tiles on the floor.
One of the more whimsical spaces is the bunk room, which has two sets of beds for the couple’s sons. The custom beds, designed by Hook, feature spreads and pillows in washed navy, a reference not only to the nautical but also to the blues in the kitchen and living room.
Each has a brass reading lamp, and the bottom beds have drawers with brass pulls.
and whimsical than the other rooms in the house, has a pair of navy-blue chests, a pair of beachscape paintings, and a caned bed headboard.
“I used brass accents throughout the house,” Hook says, “because I didn’t want anything that was high contrast; this palette lives in the middle, and brass is a soft, warm tone that complements all the cool blues.”
The ladders and rails of the bunks are made of natural wood, chosen because they can best weather the constant touch of hands. Their pill-shaped hand holds, which match the pegs on the clothes rack across the room, balance the rectilinear angles of the gray and oak bed frames.
Because the two-story beach house is small—it’s only 1,422 square feet, and its footprint and height were restricted by the rules of the community—Hook had to come up with creative ways to make the space functional for such a large family.
“Every inch of the house had to be working 100 percent in their day-to-day life,” she says.
In the bunk room, there was space for only one small chest of drawers, so Hook added drawers on the bottom of the lower-level beds. On the upper bunks, she measured precisely to make sure that the handrails can accommodate a smartphone, a tablet, or even a drinking glass.
The space constraints in the guest bedroom presented a similar challenge. Hook used a pair of chests to bookend the queen-size bed, an arrangement that left only a half inch of extra wall space.
Another space saver is the living room’s media wall, which is designed to incorporate a flat-screen TV, a fireplace and a storage area with a paneled door, all of which look as though they are a single unit.
Hook saved the most pattern for the first-floor powder room, which is papered in Hygge & West’s Amity Sunset in Sky.
Sunset in Sky.
“It’s an homage to the movie Jaws,” she says. “The house is not on Cape Cod, but the family has a great sense of humor and loved the pattern. So, we all agreed it was close enough.”
To bring in extra color and reference the setting, Hook and the couple purchased landscapes and beachscapes from local artists, including Hilary Holmes, Katie Lane, and Jorey Hurley.
The beach house is as convenient as it is comfortable. In the living room, a soft sectional sofa, ideal for watching movies after a day at the beach, has the prime seat, half of the powder room is devoted to a laundry, and the shower in the primary bath is clad in easy-to-clean porcelain tile that looks like marble. The family, Hook says, “told me they had the best first summer there.”