The owner of this four-bedroom home grew up admiring the colorful, unusual homes in design magazines. She told us she was sick of spaces that felt like a “bowl of oatmeal.” She didn’t want beige. She wanted color, and she wanted the house to stand out. As she put it, people don’t live in a vacation rental. They come for an experience and then leave, and she wanted to give them an experience they don’t have at home.
Not every owner sees it that way. A lot of our clients want their rental to look like their own home. We usually encourage them toward more color, because color helps a listing stand out, and nothing stands out like a full theme. People on vacation want somewhere different from home.
So we went all the way. She had found an octopus mural she loved, full of rich blues and golds, and that one image became an under-the-sea theme for the entire house. We came up with so many ideas that she joked she’d have to use the rest in her second unit. Whole-house themes are our founder Lisa’s favorite way to design, and this one was so much fun.
Each room is a different part of the same ocean. The octopus takes over the living room. The bedroom next to it has jellyfish in the same blues, golds and rust, so the two rooms flow together. Upstairs, a sea-turtle mural runs about 27 feet across the lounge. Another bedroom is all koi. They’re freshwater fish, but it’s the owner’s favorite.
We kept hunting for small surprises. At the very end of the project, we found a woven octopus about three feet across and tucked it into a corner of the entry, where it nearly disappears into the sea-creature wallpaper. You almost don’t see it when you walk in. We found an old metal diver’s helmet on eBay for the upstairs shelves, and every one of us tried it on during install. One bedroom was too small for a mural, so we used a bold 60-by-90-inch piece of rainbow jellyfish art that the owner picked. Then we screwed metal half-spheres, gold-leafed inside, all over the wall so they look like bubbles rising through the water.
The best surprise is under the stairs. The owner could have locked that awkward L-shaped space as her own storage closet. She asked us to make it a hideout for kids instead. Little jellyfish lights hang from the ceiling and switch on when someone walks in. There are underwater scenes on the walls, floor cushions, beanbags, books, and an under-the-sea felt wall to play with. Kids find it when they arrive, and it’s been a hit. We’ve seen parents mention it in their reviews.
A friend of ours who loves Disney toured the house and told us it was his childhood dream house, like stepping into The Little Mermaid or Finding Nemo. His nieces and nephews loved it too. That’s the kind of reaction Disney gets by committing completely to a theme, and it’s what we were going for here. We want families to remember the trip years later as the one where they stayed in “the house with the octopus.”
Going all out on the theme didn’t cost extra. We worked with a typical budget for a home this size and let the theme guide what we bought.