A Touching Home Office Redesign in Montibello

Margaret Donaldson, founder of Charleston-based MDI Luxury Design, has completed projects throughout the Carolinas for 35 years. One of her longtime clients first hired MDI to renovate her Kiawah Island beach house. A few years later, they did her family’s mountain house. After the client lost her husband to a lengthy illness, she hired MDI to redesign her main home, in Charlotte’s Montibello neighborhood. “She debated whether to keep it or sell,” Donaldson says. “Her children were adults, so she decided to renovate it and enjoy her children and grandchildren where she raised her family.” The project included a refresh of her husband’s office, which had dark-stained millwork and a green marble fireplace. “This was the room he would retreat to,” Donaldson says. “She wanted to be in that room and make it her own but still have a connection to him. The traditional bones of the space were honored, but the materials and finishes were brightened to reflect her aesthetic.”

COME TO LIGHT 

The homeowner considered removing the cherry-stained trim and wainscoting, but Donaldson thought those architectural details were too beautiful to lose. Instead, she painted the woodwork in Benjamin Moore Sea Salt and covered the walls in a blue-gray grass cloth from Phillip Jeffries. “That’s what it needed to make it more feminine,” she says. “There was a green marble fireplace surround that we took out and put in a more neutral marble.” She removed the ceiling medallion and installed a silver patina chandelier from Magni Home Collection. “We wanted to go more modern but not have it be the main feature,” she says. “We didn’t want it to block the artwork.”

WORK IT IN

Donaldson let the blue-gray area rug and patterned drapes dictate her color palette. “We wanted the fabric to be a good in-between of traditional and refreshed,” she says. Both the desk and credenza are custom pieces from Old Biscayne Designs. This allowed Donaldson to choose the desk’s door configuration, tapered legs, and contrasting finishes. “The credenza in no way looks like an office piece, but when you open the doors, it’s got a pull-out printer and file storage,” she says. “On the door fronts, we used a ribbed paneling and quartered it.” The desk chair is Hancock and Moore, and the blue armless swivel chairs, from Bracci, pull in the deepest blue from the drapes. 

DRESSED UP

Donaldson worked with the staff at Shain Gallery to select the right painting to hang above the fireplace and credenza. “It was bordering on too small for the fireplace, so we needed to fill in the space with those sconces,” she says. “These pull out the brown in the painting.” She styled the credenza with table lamps from Visual Comfort & Co. and displayed the homeowner’s antique clock and wood accent table between the two windows. “The combination of traditional millwork and the more modern furnishings and artwork pull this together,” she says. “If everything had just been blue-gray, you couldn’t incorporate the antique pieces.”