Looking Back: The Best of CH&L

We began with piles of past issues and a mission: to curate a collection of photos, stories, advice and history that would represent the best in Colorado design. We reminisced about marathon photo shoots, admired designers’ good sense and rediscovered our favorite stories. The result is a compilation of the most inspiring and compelling spaces we’ve ever featured, paired with insights from some of our most beloved experts. These pages salute the vision and passion of every homeowner, designer, builder and architect who ever shared a home with us.

TRANSITIONAL DESIGN doesn’t refer to the design evolution that happens when your style grows up from first apartment to full-fledged home. Instead, it’s a genre that captures a blend of traditional and contemporary elements—a modern couch, an Art Deco mirror, an antique Louis XV chair and a cowhide rug, perhaps. What’s the secret to making these disparate elements come together to create one comfortable room? Careful attention to scale, space planning and color. Here, a few of our favorite examples.

What do we love most about URBAN LOFTS? Exposed brick. Wide-open floor plans. High ceilings and big windows. Or maybe remnants of the building’s (likely industrial) former life, such as exposed duct work, beams or unusual millwork. Inspired by these distinctive details, designers and architects magically convert old, drab shells into stylish spaces that reflect a city’s glamour, vibrancy and life.

In recent years, architects and designers reinterpreted the idea of a rustic mountain LODGE, with brilliant results. These homes share a few important features with their predecessors: clear craftsmanship, a blend of natural materials and an intimate connection to their surroundings. But their designs embrace new elements with contemporary twists that suit the individual style of each owner.

“COTTAGE” is more of a vibe than a real design style. There’s something about these homes that feels comfortable but crafted, warm and whimsical. We want to curl up in these spaces with a good book and a hot cup of tea, or invite our friends over for a long, satisfying chat on a bright winter morning.

A perfect storm of political, cultural and technological events in the mid-20th-century gave birth to MID-CENTURY MODERN design. After World War II, Americans were eager for a new chapter in domestic life, and designers responded by ditching ornamentation for streamlined silhouettes and trading heavy woods—with their European connotation—for bent plastics,­ molded plywood, and wire and aluminum. The era crowned new kings and queens of design, such as Ray and Charles Eames, Florence and Hans Knoll, and Eero Saarinen, all of whom were keenly interested in creating furniture that embraced and supported the human form.

Whereas modern design typically refers to that post-World-War-II era of reinvented forms and minimalist thinking, CONTEMPORARY design is of the moment. (Many think they’re interchangeable, but we hope these collections will illustrate otherwise.) In these contemporary spaces, you’ll encounter some of modernism’s basic ideas—simplicity, clean lines and unique applications of materials—but notice the fluidity, too. Carpe diem, design lovers. You get to define what’s contemporary today.

CLASSICS never go out of style. Like the perfect black dress, these rooms feel timeless with a hint of personal flair. They borrow the best ideas from eras gone by—the symmetry of classical design, or the Old-World reliance on the finest materials—and then give these ideas new life. They are handsome and stately, refined and reserved.