Southern Living Idea Home 2020

Introduction

Located in The Ramble community in Biltmore Forest, this year’s Southern Living Idea Home features the latest in innovative design and architecture and boasts expansive porches and outdoor living space. The home features all the innovations that appeal to the most modern sensibilities while aesthetically and beautifully blending into the natural beauty of the western North Carolina mountains. At more than 3,500 square-feet, this year’s house showcases favorite design trends in fresh new ways.

The  Story

Southern Living assembled a dream team to undertake the project with noted interior designer Lauren Liess, architect Beau Clowney, and renowned homebuilder Buchanan Construction. Crossville proudly served as the tile supplier to this year’s home build project located in Asheville, North Carolina.

“The Crossville products we used blended well with the natural materials throughout the home and helped achieve the early-20th century meets early-21st century aesthetic we wanted to define. The shapes and profiles allowed us to be creative with placement and pairings,” explained Lauren Liess, Principal of Lauren Liess Interiors.

As the tile supplier for this visionary project, Crossville tile was specified for three of the bathrooms. In one of the two upstairs bathrooms, the team chose Crossville’s new Cursive collection for the shower walls, utilizing the 3”x6” tiles in an intricate basketweave pattern in the Ghost hue. Coordinating beautifully with the walls, the team installed Crossville’s Jazz Age collection in the Louis colorway for the shower and bathroom floors. Offering an authentic, aged hardwood patina, the designers wanted the style of visual distressed hardwood yet in durable porcelain, and taking the design in an inventive direction, they installed the 1”x3” in a herringbone pattern providing a stunning finish for the shower and bathroom floors.

For the second upstairs bathroom, the team again chose Crossvillle’s Jazz Age in the Louis colorway but mixed up the installation with the 2”x2” mosaic in a straight pattern for the shower walls and floors. Transitioning to the bathroom floor, the team chose one of Crossville’s natural-stone styles adding multidirectional striations in a soft neutral tone blending beautifully with the aged hardwood look in the shower.

In the main level guest bathroom, Crossville’s stunning State of Grace collection was installed in the shower floor. Selecting the 2”x2” mosaic in a straight pattern, the nuanced, marble-inspired graphics in porcelain tile offers Italianate beauty to this mountain dream house.

“Crossville was very responsive to our needs and understood our vision for the overall theme and the consistency we wanted the finishes and fixtures to have,” said Liess.