St. Augustine Beach · Home office & guest suite

Two Rooms That Had to Do More Than One Job

A home office that doubles as a music room, and a guest suite that spends most of the week as a study. Neither room could be furnished for a single purpose, so both were built around millwork first and furnished second.

Home office with a black fluted wood accent wall hung with three framed electric guitars lit from below by violet LED strips, a cognac leather sofa with white cushions, two cream boucle poufs on a brown and cream hide-pattern rug, a black drum pendant with a brass interior, and plantation shutters beside a keyboard on a stand

One House, Two Very Different Rooms

These two spaces sit in the same St. Augustine Beach home and were designed together, but they could not look less alike. One is dark, close and deliberately dramatic. The other is bright, soft and open to the garden. That contrast is the point: a room you retreat into and a room you open up.

What they share is the approach. In both, the built-in cabinetry was drawn first and everything else chosen around it. When a room has to hold a desk, a bed, instruments and storage without reading as a storage unit, freestanding furniture pushed against the walls will not get you there.

View through a pair of open white glass-paned pocket doors into a home office, showing the black fluted accent wall, a cognac leather sofa, two cream boucle poufs on a patterned hide rug and a black drum pendant with a brass interior — Glass Pocket Doors to the OfficeSt. Augustine Beach · Entry

A Dark Room, Seen From a Light One

Glass pocket doors do the work here. Closed, they keep the noise in and the room private. Open, they frame the dark wall as something to look at from the hallway rather than a black hole at the end of it.

A room this saturated needs a transition. Walking straight from pale walls into near-black is jarring; walking into it through a glazed opening reads as intentional.

Close view along a black fluted wall of framed electric guitars mounted on black brackets over marble-look panels, with violet LED light washing the fluting and a cognac leather sofa and palm below — Backlit Guitar DisplaySt. Augustine Beach · Millwork

The Instruments Are the Art

Guitars usually end up on a stand in a corner or hidden in a case. Here they are mounted on brackets set out from a fluted black wall, each one over a marble-look panel and lit from below, so the wall reads as a hang of framed pieces rather than as storage.

The fluting matters more than it looks. A flat black wall of that size goes dead under artificial light; the vertical relief catches the LED wash and gives the whole surface texture instead of a void.

Everything else in the room stays quiet on purpose — cognac leather, cream boucle, a patterned hide underfoot. The wall is doing the talking.

Full wall of white built-in cabinetry with brass hardware, the Murphy bed closed flush behind panelled doors, a lit open niche styled with books and objects, and a white oak desk with dual monitors and a cream upholstered chair at the far end — Built-In Wall, Bed ClosedSt. Augustine Beach · Flex space

A Guest Room That Is a Study Six Days a Week

Most of the time this is an office. The bed is closed behind panelled doors that line up with the rest of the run, the desk is out, and nothing about the wall announces that a bed is in it.

That only works if the millwork is drawn as one wall. Cabinetry to the ceiling, a lit open niche to break up the mass, drawers below, and the desk let into the run rather than added to it.

Guest room with a Murphy bed folded down and made up in white bedding with a mustard lumbar pillow, flanked by white built-in cabinetry, a lit display niche with a lamp and framed art, and a white oak desk with dual monitors and an upholstered chair beside a window — The same wall, with the bed down St. Augustine Beach · Flex space

White oak fold-down desk set into a white built-in cabinet wall with brass hardware, holding two monitors and a keyboard, with a cream upholstered swivel chair on a brass base over dark wood flooring — Fold-Down Oak DeskSt. Augustine Beach · Millwork

A Desk That Folds Away

The white oak desk drops down out of the cabinet run and folds back up when the room needs to be a guest room again. Warm oak against the white cabinetry keeps it from reading as another painted panel, and the brass hardware ties it to the rest of the wall.

The chair was chosen to be light enough to move out of the way in a second. In a room that changes function, nothing heavy should sit in the middle of it.

Sitting room with a curved cream boucle sectional facing a round white oak coffee table with a fluted base and stone top, a wall of windows looking onto palms and clipped hedges, a fiddle-leaf fig in a terracotta pot, a white arc floor lamp and slim brass nesting side tables — Curved Sectional Sun RoomSt. Augustine Beach · Living room

Curves Against a Wall of Glass

With windows on two sides, the furniture had to stay low and soft. A curved boucle sectional, a round fluted oak table with a stone top, slim brass side tables — nothing tall enough to interrupt the view of the palms and hedging outside.

Rounded shapes do something a rectangular sofa cannot in a room framed by that much straight glazing: they keep the eye moving instead of lining everything up with the window mullions.

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More Spaces to Explore

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Floor-to-ceiling white shaker built-ins framing a recessed desk with a quartz top, dual monitors, a dark upholstered chair, open display niches holding sculptures, books and a potted plant, and a large framed smoke-and-skull canvas mounted above the desk — White Built-In Desk WallSt. Augustine Beach · Millwork

Close view of a white open shelf holding a black footed bowl with a tasseled throw, a small brass architectural model of a classical temple on a stack of design books, and a gilt-framed picture on the shelf below — Styled Niche DetailSt. Augustine Beach · Detail

Two-storey great room with a fluted white oak feature wall, two illuminated arched niches and a pale sectional — Fluted Oak Great RoomNocatee · Great room

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