We are in the Hudson Valley, upstate New York. Between tall trees and rolling hills sits a converted barn, the home of Rachel and Nick Cope, founders of Calico Wallpaper. With a worn, wooden facade, large windows, and an extension with a grass-covered roof, the house is surrounded by a landscape that blurs the boundaries between forest and garden, interior and landscape. This is also what made the couple fall for the modern home in the first place.
"We were drawn to the quiet immediacy of the landscape, the way the house sits within it rather than apart from it," the Copes say, who lived in New York for many years but were seeking more space, physically as well as creatively. "It felt like a place where we could slow down and really pay attention to light, to weather, and to each other," they add.
The couple hired designers and long-time collaborators Sarah Zames and Colin Stief at General Assembly to design their new home. When they began working on the place, it already boasted wooden floors, lots of natural light, and soft transitions between inside and outside.
"It was a beautiful structure, but lacked some of the couple's personality," says Colin. They introduced layers that reflected the Copes' work, community, and history.
Early on, they all agreed that they wanted the house to feel like a living gallery, not something sharp and austere, pairing art pieces and design made by friends and collaborators with more simplistic wooden furniture — vintage and new. It was all about accumulation rather than composition, the Cope couple says. As a result, the home reflects the couple's authentic and multi-faceted style, not unlike their own wallpaper designs.
Rachel and Nick are partners in business as well as in life. Together, they founded Calico Wallpaper, collaborating with renowned designers and artists on beautiful wallpapers that exist in a world far from your grandmother's living room. Calico was born in 2013, during Hurricane Sandy, when the flooding constrained the couple inside.
"We were forced to reconsider our surroundings," they say of that time. Through translating Rachel's artworks into wallpaper, the company took shape. Years later, the pandemic once again prompted the couple to take a closer look at the nature around them — this time in their Hudson Valley home.
Selecting wallpapers for their new home, however, was not an easy task. Just as important as choosing the designs was knowing when to hold back.
They did not want the house to become a living portfolio, Colin says. Instead, the designers proceeded with care, using the designs sparingly and balancing them out with quieter surfaces like plaster, a material that emphasizes natural light.
"The views outside are such a huge part of the interior. In the living room, the palette and furniture are very minimal to not distract from the wide-open view," says Colin.
The use of wood — especially oak — was already a consistent material language when they began working on the house, providing a foundation for the overall palette.
Vintage wooden Alpine chairs and Shaker-inspired benches are combined with a modern oak-covered kitchen, each expressing the material in its own way.
In the wallpapered rooms, the walls are the artworks. This allows the clean lines of simpler pieces of furniture to stand out, such as the long wooden table in the dining room, paired with the bright, abstract palette of the Fragments wallpaper, inspired by the colors outside the window.
In their daughter's room, an evening sky covers walls and ceilings, making the low mezzanine bed literally feel like it's floating among clouds.
The more playful pieces of furniture and bold textures are saved for the light-walled rooms. The Lindsey Adelman pendant hanging over their dining table is one of their favorite accents, and brings movement to the room's otherwise minimal furniture.
Colorful, sculptural creations by British designer Faye Toogood sit in the living room and by the entrance, creating a dynamic contrast to the warm oak floors and clean surfaces.
The placement of the Misha Kahn mirror in the living room was inspired by how the children navigate the house, Rachel says. "Seeing how they inhabit the space brings a sense of playfulness to everything," the owners explain.
To incorporate Rachel and Nick's style in your own home, editing is just as important as adding something new. Furniture, art, or wallpaper, a statement piece always exists in relation to the other, and shines when it doesn't have to compete for attention.
Wallpapers can completely change the feeling of a room, but so can a big window. By considering the view outside as part of your home, unexpected colors, shapes, and movement become part of the room.
Rachel and Nick admit that their favorite part of the house changes as the day progresses, reflecting the changing of the light.
Several of the artists and designers featured in the house are also collaborators of Calico. Toogood's designs, for example, dress the walls of Nick's upstairs office. Just like large, black brushstrokes against a light backdrop cover its surfaces, contrasts also characterize the room in relationship to the rest of the house.
Here, soft wooden floors are replaced with gray carpets, and the natural light is dimmed with darker black-colored furniture.
The heavy clash with the rest of the house made this Colin's preferred room in the project — a more introspective space for ideas to ruminate before they are let out into the open, or into their next client's home.
It captures what the house represents: "it's a bit of everything, and that balance is essential to us. It's a space for family life, for gathering, for working, and for solitude."
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