Having grown up on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, the textile designer Rebecca Atwood was instilled with coastal sensibilities. She and her husband, Steve Bernstein, were comfortably settled in an apartment in Brooklyn, but after having their daughter in 2018, they yearned for more space for her to grow in greener pastures.
After a trial run in Charleston, S.C., during the pandemic, the couple didn’t need more convincing that it was the right place for them to relocate and headed there in August 2021. They rented for the next three years before eventually buying a charming 1930s house with good bones, a strong foundation, and, most important, a sense of warmth, toward the end of 2024.
Ms. Atwood wanted the home to feel imaginative, especially for her 6-year-old daughter, who would make core memories there. During the four-month project, her daughter was “a big part of thinking about the décor,” she said, so every room is bursting with color, patterns and textures that freshen up the 2,100-square-foot home without stripping it of character. The four months of manual labor are meticulously documented in her latest book, “The Harmonious Home.”
Ms. Atwood lives within walking distance of Hampton Park in downtown Charleston, one of her favorite places to immerse herself in. Before even deciding on the house’s layout, Ms. Atwood knew she wanted to paint a mural of the park in the dining room. While the large-scale landscape only took her about three days to paint, she spent about a year working on the digital finishing, scanning and sampling before releasing a wallpaper version of it on her website. The piece serves as a tribute to her family’s new chapter in South Carolina and the natural surroundings that have made them feel welcome in the neighborhood.
“We were trying to get settled in this new place, which is very different from anywhere we’ve ever lived before,” she said. “Walking in the park, and then painting in the park, allowed me to get to know the place and settle myself here.”
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