High Lights: Tour an Aspen Home as Beautiful as its Mountain View

Designer Miranda Cullen’s clients were building a new, three-story house in the foothills of Aspen with a view of Red Mountain when they asked her for a distinct interior. They weren’t interested in the design tropes of the West—skip the buffalos, antlers, and horses—they wanted something much more personal.

“The family has two other homes, both on beaches,” Cullen says. “They wanted that coastal vibe infused into this property, but without it looking like a literal beach house stuck on the side of a mountain.”

Cullen and her team at Inside Stories, a Littleton, CO, design studio, decided to mix rugged and earthy elements with fresh and lively touches. The combination would nod to the family’s coastal roots, but also reflect the mountain setting. “The wife has amazing taste, so we wanted to curate a house that spoke to her,” Cullen says. “When clients are willing to take a little bit of a design risk, then you can step out and give them a creative, thoughtfully designed home.”

The kitchen nicely shows off the play of earth and ocean. Cullen combined a white-washed wood for the cabinet faces, Cambria’s Brittanicca Warm for the countertops and backsplash, and a series of pressed clay pendant lights that Cullen hand selected to hang across the length of the island. Clay makes a repeat appearance in the tile used for the range’s backsplash and hood, but instead of blending in with the room’s earthy elements, the dimensional tile’s sheen and color provide contrast in the space.

“The texture and pattern play with the different surfaces is really important,” Cullen says. “The Cambria is clean and modern, but with a little movement, and then the Kelly Wearstler tile gives a soft pop of blue that’s a fresh vibe and a bit of a nod toward the seaside.”

The kitchen, living and dining rooms, and outdoor pool are all on the house’s top level with the bedrooms below on the second floor. This upside-down floor plan, which required engineering the house into the mountainside, provides maximum mountain views from the rooms where the family spends the most time.

In the living room, Cullen balanced the large expanse of windows with warm wood on the ceiling, floor, and an interior wall, but she chose to vary the tones using a rich walnut on the walls, a rustic oak on the ceiling, and very clean, almost Scandinavian-looking wood for the floors.

She also gave a lot of thought to the furniture placement in the living room. “Additionally, this client was very keen on comfortable seating.” So Cullen selected two deep sofas accented with patterned pillows and two swivel chairs that can face the pool or into the room. Two striped ottomans can provide additional seating or serve as nice foot rests.

The dining room is fully visible from the living room, so it continues the earthy palette, but Cullen chose more cinnamon notes for this space. “We go through a fabric exercise with all of our clients, and the fabric on the back of the dining room chairs was one of this couple’s must haves,” Cullen says. “We put the pattern on the outside because they didn’t want a rug under the table, so this really brings color and warmth into the room.”

The sculptural light fixture by Larose Guyon was also on the homeowners’ must-have list and Cullen floated the iron and blown glass fixture over the dining room table. The home’s other dramatic lighting moment comes from the set of three chandeliers in the central stairwell with the stairs rising and wrapping around the lights. “We used all three sizes of the fixture, small, medium, and large,” Cullen says. “They’re the artwork for that gorgeous floating staircase.”

The client was not pattern adverse, which really let Cullen play with texture and color throughout. “We are curating an aesthetic that works with their lifestyle,” says Cullen. The house is a hit with the family, so much so that the couple has asked Cullen to work with them on the design of another house.