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The 1870s shingle-style house towers above the crashing waves of the Atlantic in Rockport, Massachusetts. A storybook-worthy manse with octagonal turrets, bedrooms tucked under zigzagging Victorian eaves, and sweeping views of the surf, it’s the kind of fantasy summer escape that should inspire glittering vacation memories—not, God forbid, yawns. But boredom it indeed evoked when Salem-based designer Sarah Henley got a first look behind its doors. “The whole house was painted the same beige color,” says Henley. “It was dry and depressing—all bones, zero personality.”
Also: This is New England. Embracing quirkiness is encouraged here. Henley, faced with a house full of choppy angles, awkward proportions, and enough character to stock a Dickens novel, decided to lean in hard. It helped that her clients—childhood sweethearts and creatives who grew up in the area but now live on the West Coast—wanted their summer gathering place to work for their whole extended family and for each room in the house to tell its own unique story.
A striped wallpaper border by Studio Atkinson outlines original millwork in the entry. The vintage bentwood chair is from Chairish. Powder room wallpaper, Ottoline. Rug from Nickey Kehoe.
Jared Kuzia
"We introduced elements that lean nautical without hitting you over the head," says Henley of the living room's striped Dumais Made floor lamp base and celestial-patterned Una Malan fabric on the spindle-back Nickey Kehoe chair.
Jared KuziaHenley’s M.O.? Work with the architectural idiosyncrasies while making sure the frills were still function-forward in a holiday home meant for barefoot plug-and-play ease. The living room, located in the base of one of the turrets, boasts drop-dead vistas, but also oddly angled window walls and choppy soffited ceilings. Henley wasn’t the least perturbed, though, choosing a vintage Milo Baughman sectional to curve perfectly into the tricky proportions so it elegantly commands the space, then covering it in a nuanced Rose Tarlow azure stripe that’s like sunlight stippled through a wave, to echo the show outside.
Then there’s the wallpaper—a winding, viney motif that Henley and her wallpaper installer carefully plotted to embrace every odd angle. The organic pattern draws your eye around the room, making you forget all about those problematic ceiling lines. “If we had done something more monolithic on the walls, I think it would just feel static and choppy,” she says.
Form serves function in the mudroom, where built-in storage benches are painted in Farrow & Ball’s De Nimes and wear cushions in a Boon & Up fabric. Roman shades in Chelsea Textiles stripe. Antique rug.
Jared Kuzia
Farrow & Ball's Yeabridge Green coats the banister leading to a pair of guest rooms on the third floor. Each bedroom is adorned with a name placard to help weekend visitors locate their designated space with ease.
Jared Kuzia
In the dining room, Henley opted to keep birds-eye maple built-ins, installed in the ’90s, commissioning Pauline Curtiss to paint a custom mural featuring local flora. Mantel in Farrow & Ball’s Light Blue. Antique farmhouse table with a Fibreworks seagrass rug underfoot. Windsor chairs, O&G Studio.
JAred KuziaIn the dining room, Henley faced down blocky 1990s built-in cabinetry with characteristic resourcefulness. Instead of ripping them out—they’re crafted from beautifully grained birds-eye maple—she commissioned local decorative painter Pauline Curtiss to create a custom mural using native flora. Now Queen Anne’s lace and swamp violets curl around the doors, a perfect complement to the original mantel, now cloaked in a cerulean blue, and shipshape Windsor chairs.
The “Ocean” room, which is also the primary bedroom, embraces quiet horizon hues with walls in a natural fiber from Phillip Jeffries with sandy undertones and blue-green threads. Mirror, Dumais Made; nightstand, Hollywood at Home; vintage bench, Chairish.
Jared KuziaIf the living room was Henley proving she could tame a turret, the bedrooms are where she let loose. Each one unfolds like a chapter in a beach-read opus, marked by custom brass placards featuring a fish, a sun, a rabbit, a flower, or a book. Not signage—breadcrumbs in a fairy tale. The “Garden” room, tucked under third-floor eaves, boasts angled planes covered head-to-toe in a grasscloth scattered with whimsical leaves and limned with windows trimmed in a punchy teal blue. The “Sunshine” room features a headboard Henley had painted a yolk hue and paired with clover-patterned wallpaper, lavender millwork, and red-striped Roman shades that could stop traffic. “We embraced the full spectrum of the rainbow,” Henley says. “We didn’t want to rule out any color in this house.”
A Lake August wallpaper covers the “Roost” room in a flock of birds. Window trim in Farrow & Ball’s Lichen. The top of the vintage chest, found on Chairish, was wrapped in blue leather to echo the seascape outside. The bedding is from Parachute, Quince, and Piglet in Bed.
Jared Kuzia
The “Garden” room is wrapped in a leafy Ferrick Mason grasscloth. Window trim pops in Farrow & Ball’s Slate Blue. The nightstand was sourced from the Brimfield Antique Flea Market, the headboards from Chairish, and the rug from Etsy. Pillows in Clare Louise Frost fabric.
Jared Kuzia
The aptly named “Sunshine” room is rainbow bright and irreverent with wallpaper from Ottoline mingling with Roman shades in a C&C Milano stripe, and millwork in Farrow & Ball’s Brassica. Headboard, repainted in Farrow & Ball’s Dayroom Yellow, from Design Within Reach. The custom Moroccan rug is from Etsy.
Jared KuziaThroughout, Henley’s sourcing plays like the kind of summer bash everyone wants an invite to, with Brimfield flea finds mingling with C&C Milano threads and Etsy scores sidling up to bespoke coffee tables. There are plenty of vintage rag rugs to handle sandy feet and antiques like an 18th-century American chest of drawers that wear their patina with pride. “We didn’t want guests to feel like they needed to tiptoe around,” she says. “It needed to feel lived-in from the start.” Which is how a house once beige and bone-dry came buzzing back to life, fizzing with color, character, and enough magic to fuel a lifetime of fairy tales.
