Burgundy, metallic decor make strong statement in Geneva couple's home

First pick a red. Scarlet, rose, carmine, brick, fuchsia or raspberry, you want to use the same shade through the house when decorating for Christmas, says Kathleen Newhouse of Geneva - especially if your floor plan is as open as hers.

The crimson in her home leans toward burgundy, a choice of designers from The Little Traveler in Geneva, who enhanced Newhouse's own holiday decorations for Geneva's Christmas Walk and & House Tour held earlier this month.

"The Newhouse home is more formal than others we've done," said Sandy Fanella, who coordinated the project and urges homeowners to be true to their own palettes at Christmas, rather than automatically selecting traditional red and dark green.

"The burgundy came from some gorgeous dishes she has and the painting in the family room. She really likes blues and icy colors. There's a gorgeous (silver and cream) chest in her entry when you first walk in, and that set the metallic theme for the angels and reindeer we used. Metallics helped tie it all together."

And Fanella said Kathleen Newhouse's monochromatic color scheme - browns, creams, gold, silver and bronze with accents of sea foam aqua - made seasonal decorating easier for the staff from Little Traveler's many departments.

Newhouse, a designer with Toms-Price Home Furnishings based in Wheaton, calls her home style "vintage glam."

Her favorite enhancements from Little Traveler include the elegant swags on the staircase. "They are so much easier to put up than garland, which sheds, and they are custom made and beautiful and the right colors for my house."

The swags' materials include those used through the house - greenery, glass birds with white feather tails and wide, wired ribbons. The hydrangeas are silvery blue and some of the poinsettia leaves are Newhouse's sea foam.

Kathleen Newhouse loves to show her "jewel box powder room," demonstrating the French touches this Francophile added throughout the house. The metallic walls are glazed with chocolate, and here and there on the walls is a leaf arrangement inspired by the fleur de lis. Her painter built up the leaf decals with plaster, striated them and added a decorative nail head beneath each. As with most of the artwork hanging in the house, the four small pictures in the powder room are French. In this case, flowers, a butterfly and a turtle.

"I've always loved Paris," she said, and she has shopped at the famous flea market and Maison & Objet, a trade show for the home decor industry where she particularly loves the textiles.

Also near the entry is the dining room, highlighted by the modern chandelier with a round, gold silklike shade and smooth rather than faceted crystals. In the bay window a large lighted angel heralds the holiday.

As in several areas, the dining room walls started with Benjamin Moore's Norwich Brown, then the addition of bronze glazes make it glow. Other colors in the house are Ashley Gray and Bleeker Beige.

Wide white sparkling netlike ribbon makes a bold statement on the family room tree. Newhouse points out the clever use of rubber bands to give the effect of giant bows with red dots in the centers. The hydrangeas here are red, and poinsettias gold and green. Crimson and reflective sequins cover red twigs.

Yellow and gold tones for the tree came from a beautiful box Newhouse displays in the room and the gold and aqua silk rug, said Fanella.

In the lower level silver carolers shine in a vignette and demonstrate one of the strong points of this home's Christmas accessories - they are large enough to make statements.

It is also important to place items at different levels, said Fanella, raising them with cake plates, books or in one case in this home, overturned candle holders.

Newhouse enjoys casual entertaining in the lower level where custom banquettes show more dramatic colors than in other parts of the house, muted brown, orange, red and bronze. And she thinks Little Traveler's plain, simply decorated alpine trees fit the area's mood, expanded by old movie film reels on a wall and an industrial table with a rough top and a metal crank on the side.

Kathleen and her husband, Russ, share their Eagle Brook Country Club home with two dogs, Roxie and Gunner, loved for their personalities rather than the fact their golden coats fit the decor.

Christmas decorations should make the most of a home's assets. After all, the views of a pond offered from all three levels helped convince the Newhouses to buy the house a few years ago. Greenery, glitter, red bows and very tall sticks stand in black containers to highlight the rear deck. And a lighted arch over a small seating area on a lower patio draws eyes down to the pond.

Family traditions are especially important when children are growing, said the Newhouses. When they took their children on excursions to see Christmas lights they carried along candy canes to hand out to homeowners whose abodes were "best dressed for Christmas."

And this year the couple got a great head start for their own celebrations.