If you follow U.S. Route 6 all the way to the tip of Cape Cod, past the oyster-rich shores of Wellfleet but just before bustling Provincetown, you’ll find Truro. A sleepy little town, it’s home to four restaurants, a handful of shops, a library, and a small yacht and tennis club. “And in my humble opinion,” says New York–based designer Allegra Eifler, “it has the most beautiful beaches on the Cape.”
Eifler’s mother, Cecilia Clarke, a former nonprofit executive, and stepfather John Born, an artist, had rented summer houses in Truro since Eifler was just six years old. Over the years, their party grew to include Eifler’s two younger siblings, Josephine and Simon; her husband, Morgan; and her daughter, Evie. When a house that Clarke had been eyeing for years went up for sale in 2019, she and Born decided to make it a permanent base for their family. “It had been in total disrepair when my mom first fell in love with it, but someone else had ended up buying it and renovating it before putting it back on the market,” says Eifler. “I remember her saying, ‘This is my house—no one is going to take it from me!’”
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In the family room of her parents’ Truro, Massachusetts, summer house, designer Allegra Eifler embraced a timeless seaside pairing of blue and white. The sectional and oversize ottoman (in a Raoul Textiles fabric) can easily accommodate six people for movie nights. She dressed up the Thomas O’Brien for Visual Comfort sconce with a ticking-stripe shade from Newport Lamp & Shade Company.
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When Eifler’s mother, Cecilia Clarke (left, pictured with Eifler and granddaughter Genevieve), fell in love with a particular bright-blue paint (Benjamin Moore’s aptly named Summer Show), she designed a checkerboard-patterned floor around it for the dining room and kitchen. The bench seat is upholstered in Levan by Colefax & Fowler.
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The house’s original walkway was removed to create a larger front yard.
Tim LenzThis time, Clarke was successful, and the 1825 Greek Revival was officially theirs. Eifler was enlisted to help transform it into a “no-fuss, barefoot beach haven that’s as breezy in the summer as it is cozy in the winter.” Because the house had been so recently renovated, Eifler was able to make just a handful of structural changes, mostly aimed at restoring the house’s historic charm— beadboard ceilings were installed in the living room and guest rooms, while an upstairs office was turned into an additional bedroom complete with an old-fashioned captain’s bed. (Luckily, the house’s original floors and wavy glass windows had remained untouched.) The previous owner had also converted the attic into the primary bedroom, which Eifler brightened up by raising the roof and installing a large dormer window. “We’re a very light-obsessed family,” laughs Eifler. Painted floors, that New England summer house staple, managed to appeal to both parties: The primary bedroom got a simple coat of glossy white, while the kitchen and dining room floors were done in a bright blue-and-white checkerboard pattern (“I love how it almost looks like a linoleum floor from the 1950s,” says Eifler). So did Eifler’s selection of antique quilts, surprisingly enough. “I was worried that my stepfather would be unreceptive to them, but I think because he’s an artist, he really appreciated the beautiful craftsmanship.”
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Bright yellow Ann Sacks tile was the jumping-off point for the kitchen, where cocktail hour starts promptly at 6 p.m. every evening.
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Beach essentials hang by the side door.
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Eifler, Clarke, and Genevieve sit on the 1960s rattan daybed, from Design Research.
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Red-and-white cabana striped fabric by Jane Churchill adds an Americana note to the study.
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In the guest barn, antique quilts found at Round Top Antiques Fair lend a folk-art spirit. Simple curtains in an indoor/outdoor sheer fabric by Schumacher allow windows to stay open even in rainy weather.
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With maximizing the house’s already abundant sunlight a top priority, Clarke and Born requested that window treatments be kept to a minimum, so Eifler installed simple roller shades only where necessary. “The house is set back enough that there was really no need from a privacy perspective,” explains Eifler. “And the windows are so small—and there are so many of them—that curtains would have probably been over- bearing anyway.” As for tempering the effects of UV rays on fabrics and furnishings, Eifler has resigned herself to letting nature take its course: “I keep telling my mother to please close all of the blinds when she leaves, but I know she doesn’t. The reality is that everything will probably be a bit faded and covered in sunspots in a few years—and it will just be part of the charm!”
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The primary bedroom’s high-gloss, white-painted floor keeps things cool on hot summer days. Uppark wallpaper by Farrow & Ball; sconce by Mark D. Sikes for Hudson Valley Lighting.
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One of Clarke’s most prized heirlooms, a 19th-century French pastel by Léon-Augustin Lhermitte titled Woman Herding Geese, hangs in her bedroom. The other nursing chair from her grandmother’s pair was re-covered in Bennison’s Hollyhock fabric.
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Inspired by the captain’s bed in a house that her mother had rented for years, Eifler jumped at the opportunity to add one in a guest room. “Captain’s beds are so innate to the Cape spirit—it just felt like it had to be there!” she says. Farrow & Ball’s Ringwold wallpaper “really felt like an extension of the leafy view outside.” The vintage French chair was reupholstered in a ticking stripe by Elsie Green; the pillow is by Antoinette Poisson through John Derian. Vendome Double Sconce (with a custom lampshade in Schumacher’s Stella Sheer fabric) and Terri Desk Lamp by Thomas O’Brien for Visual Comfort.
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A painting by Henry Ives Cobb Jr.— Eifler’s great-great-grandfather— hangs above the vintage rattan desk.
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A soft pink ottoman and rag rug (from Curiouser & Curiouser in nearby Wellfleet) add a rosy glow to the primary bathroom. The tub is by Ove Decors.
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The upside, though, is clearly worth it: That unyielding, streaming Cape Cod sunlight manages to simultaneously soften and amplify the colors used throughout the house, from bolder textiles to white- painted walls with the slightest of undertones, bathing each room in an ethereal glow of rosy pink or tranquil celadon or warm gold for an overall effect that captures the hazy nostalgia of summers past. “Everything about this house has a sentimental connection,” notes Eifler, pointing out a photo of her mother as a young girl in a blue-and-yellow Florence Eiseman bathing suit that inspired the color palette of the bedroom that adjoins her own daughter’s. “As a designer, I had to maintain a delicate balance between the emotional and the aesthetic. But that made it all the more meaningful.”
“An ode to the matriarchs in my family,” Evie’s room is decorated with a Limoges bunny lamp that once sat in Eifler’s mother’s childhood bedroom, her grandmother’s brass bed, and a child-size chair inherited from her great-grandmother. Quilt from Cindy’s Antique Quilts; wallpaper by Colefax & Fowler.
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Swathed in Colefax & Fowler’s Leafberry wallpaper, the Blue Room holds one of a pair of nursing chairs from Eifler’s great-grandmother, newly reupholstered in a Jane Churchill stripe. Coverlet by Chelsea Textiles; rag rug from Periwinkle.
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Another heirloom brass bed appears in the room adjoining Evie’s. “I thought it might be too heavy at first, but it really grounds the space,” says Eifler. Wallpaper and chair fabric by Colefax & Fowler.
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