For a town with “beach” right there in its name, Palm Beach isn’t famous for being, well, beachy—at least not in the salty, sun-dazed, sand-in-your-toes sense of the word. That might explain why, when Dabney and Rob Jewell decided to turn a house on the island’s North End into their own chilled-out coastal retreat, their point of reference wasn’t the Addison Mizner and Marion Sims Wyeth manses of local legend, but the charmingly laid-back cottages of Harbour Island. Or, more specifically, one designed by Tom Scheerer.

When Dabney, a former decorator who worked for David Easton and Charlotte Moss, first saw the 1950s bungalow-style house, she was nonplussed. “It was this nondescript, sort of split-level without any architectural interest on a little tiny plot. Initially, I didn’t see any promise in it at all,” she says. But something about it reminded her of a favorite project by one of her design icons, Tom Scheerer: an elegantly pared-back villa on Harbour Island called The Banyans, which he designed for Olivier de Givenchy. “That was the exact look I was going for—super simple, understated,” she recalls. “I told Rob that the only way I could see us buying this house was if Tom Scheerer decorates it.”

The problem? She doubted that Scheerer, an A-list designer whose projects these days tend to be on the grander scale, would have any interest in taking on their comparatively modest project. Drastic measures would be needed. “So I had Rob fly to New York with a check in his hand and go knock on Tom’s door and try to charm him into coming to Palm Beach to look at our little house,” recalls Dabney. “We told him he’d have carte blanche to do anything he wanted; we trusted him completely.”

The bet paid off: Scheerer was indeed charmed, both by the Jewells and by their refreshingly unexpected choice of domicile.“I really admired them for purposefully choosing this cozy, small house. Most people these days want everything bigger and flashier,” says the designer, who had recently purchased a place in Palm Beach himself. “I liked that it was in my new hometown, and I enjoy working with young, eager clients—that aspect of it was fun. They were very excited to get the full Tom Scheerer treatment.”

The Jewells had sent most of their older, more traditional furniture to their summer house in Virginia, allowing Scheerer to start with a relatively clean slate. But first, some major structural renovations were in order. “The house was more or less taken down to the studs, although we couldn’t really change the footprint because the rules in Palm Beach are so strict,” Scheerer recalls. A second floor with a new primary suite was added above the kitchen; off it is a balcony that offers a glimpse of the ocean. The more-or-less barren landscape was overhauled by Keith Williams, co-principal of the lauded Palm Beach firm Nievera Williams, who installed a pool, patio, and dozens of different varieties of trees; within a year, the back of the house was covered in vines.

“One of the intriguing things about the project was that we specifically embraced a beachy, informal vibe,” says Scheerer. Adds Dabney, “He told us from the start that this is a beach house and you have to treat it like a beach house. There’s going to be sand and dogs and surfboards and kids.” Rather than attempt to reimagine the house as a grand Palm Beach manse, Scheerer leaned into its laid-back Floridian appeal, cladding the living room in pecky cypress and filling it with an eclectic mix that included vintage rattan, an 18th-century Windsor chair, and silk-screened Josef Albers prints. Originally, the house’s front door opened directly onto the large space, so to create the sense of a separate foyer, Scheerer devised a pair of large floating bookcases to visually divide it. “Having that continuous ceiling keeps the whole thing airier and lighter than if we had put up an actual wall,” he explains.

The palette is colorful, but in a sun-faded way, drawing from the sandy tans, watery blues, and leafy greens just outside the front door. In the kitchen, a ceiling-height backsplash is covered in custom Smink tiles woven through with jolts of bluish green, which is matched in the boldly painted island. A low-slung sofa in the loggia covered in a pale aqua-and-ivory striped indoor/outdoor fabric from Schumacher and vintage chairs topped with cushions in Perennials’ evocatively named Rough ‘n Rowdy performance fabric the color of sea glass. “The rooms are sort of color-coded, whereas usually my houses are more monochromatic,” notes Scheerer. “But there is still a consistent thread. Nothing sticks out like a sore thumb.”

True to her word, Dabney resisted any urge to question Scheerer’s design directive, even when he suggested that they combine the former dining room with the kitchen to create a more casual breakfast area. “I remember asking him, ‘What about Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner?’” Dabney says. “He had insisted on putting a Ping-Pong table in the family room—he said ‘You have to have a Ping-Pong table, this is a kids’ house!’—and he told us that if we wanted to have a fancy meal, we could just pull chairs around it and use it as a dining table. I argued with him for about five seconds before saying OK.” Scheerer, of course, was right. “Every Saturday night we have these huge parties with about 25 kids and they play Ping-Pong or set up a volleyball net and it’s just so unbelievably fun,” gushes Dabney. “Tom really made something out of nothing. Like I said, the only person who could do this was him.”

THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN VOLUME 13 OF FREDERIC MAGAZINE. CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE!