When Alyse Archer-Coité moved into Noxon House in 2020, she expected to hit some bumps along the way. After all, she was a single woman moving from California to New York, so there were bound to be some hiccups in transitioning from one country to another. Of course, that was only half the battle for the design researcher as she began renovating her rural retreat, a Dutch colonial home in Poughquag, in the midst of a global pandemic.
Despite a series of restrictions (and a looming recession), Archer-Coité didn't let that stop her from curating her dream home, treating every change as a fun challenge. Given the property's 250-year history, she had no desire to repeat the past by designing the interior with a more traditional theme. “The owners of the house had really enjoyed the period that the house was from and incorporated furniture, iconography and things that were reminiscent of that period, which I didn't want to do,” she explains. “I didn’t want any references to American, heavy wooden furniture on 19th-century English furniture; All of these things were just for me.”
Jonathan Hokklo
Rather than limiting himself, Archer-Coité's thoughtful curation consisted of different eras, genres and materials. “I wanted a mix of contemporary and artisanal, industrial, but also delicate and feminine things; all the things I like,” she adds. “I wanted everything to be conversational.” Her strategy for furnishing the space was based on necessity, so the schedule was flexible, but she was tied to a modest budget that couldn't budge.
“Maybe that's more typical of my personality, but it was more like that [knowing] What I didn't want and having that helped me define what I really wanted in the moments I was buying things. I didn’t want to have a lot of restrictions,” she says. “I wanted to have the freedom to make decisions along the way and not try to fall back into a certain style.”
Last April, the designer-researcher decided to bathe the walls of her bedroom in Sardine from Farrow & Ball and Christopher John Rogers' Carte Blanche collection. “I’m so afraid of color,” she admits. “I would always choose white because I don't want to regret anything and have to do it again when I get tired of it.” But there was something appealing about bringing blue into the boudoir. Although a blue bedroom wasn't originally on her mood board for the house, Archer-Coité stopped resisting and gave in to the idea. Having lived with it long enough, she describes the room as “very atmospheric” but “not too sexy.” It could be a bedroom, but nothing untoward is happening here – “I don’t want to turn it into a dungeon,” she adds.
“The house is in its own era, the architectural style is very specific and it has its own personality that really can't be ignored, so I wanted to play with it as much as possible but not stay in that era,” Archer concludes -Coite. “Looking back, I love how unexpected it is that when you enter, you don’t know exactly what you’ll find in each room.” Below, the designer researcher reveals all the details that went into the metamorphosis of her atmospheric blue bedroom.