A Traditional Mountain Home With Clean Lines and a Modern Edge

The homeowners of this Vail Valley legacy home want to enjoy nature from every angle.

10 hours ago

Amanda Bonner,

Exterior The glassed-in foyer contains a photo from Trowbridge Gallery in London, an organic bronzed table that looks like a tree root from the Phillips Collection, and a durable rug from Isberian with a bold, tribal feel. | Photo: Dallas + Harris

Situated at a 9,100-foot elevation and surrounded by an aspen forest in the Vail Valley, this home was a perfect fit for a multigenerational Texas family in search of a legacy second home. “I knew immediately that this house was ‘the one’ because it’s so timeless,” says the daughter of the family. “It has modern, clean lines, but it also has a traditional mountain aesthetic. It’s stone and steel and glass, and everywhere you look is live art. All the hallways are glass, and the ceilings have skylights. The house changes constantly, framing the landscape instead of competing with it.”

Entryway The house is nestled into the hillside, following the natural topography of the mountain. “That makes it more exciting from the inside, too, because when you’re looking out the windows, you see the beautiful surroundings,” says Denise Taylor of Aspen Design House. | Photo: Dallas + Harris

“It’s great,” the daughter says. “It’s all trees, especially in the summer when they’re leafing out and surrounded by flowers.” With seven bedrooms and eight baths, the home is 8,327 square feet and includes a remodel by the late Peter Dominick, founder of 4240 Architecture, that reimagined the house as four pavilions joined by atrium connectors and included a large “treehouse” addition to the original 2006 structure.

For the interiors, “I was hoping to mix the tranquility of the Amangiri Hotel in Canyon Point, Utah, with the quirkiness and warmth of Aspen’s Hotel Jerome,” says the daughter. “I wanted it to feel calming but not sterile.” So she turned to Aspen Design House to shepherd her ideas to reality.

Patio The clients’ own chairs, draped with pillows and blankets from Fibre by Auskin, surround an Arteriors Home coffee table, with a lacquered geometric side table, also from Arteriors. | Photo: Dallas + Harris

When the surrounding terrain is as eye-poppingly beautiful as it is with this mountainside aerie, it’s quite an achievement for the interiors to measure up—but in this case, Aspen Design House created a stunning look that manages to frame the outside like a Monet painting. “We focused on furniture, decorations, space planning, color schemes, textures, artwork and lighting—designing the interiors so they really flowed,” says Denise Taylor, ADH founder and design director.

One big challenge was the size of the Dominick addition. “It was a beautiful home, and that main treehouse space was so dramatic architecturally, with huge, tall ceilings, a big fireplace—beyond human scale,” says Taylor, who worked with ADH’s lead designer, Geneva Podolak Knox, on the project. “Our job was to make it functional and desirable, drawing people in, whether it’s the parents, the grown kids or guests. Now the spaces feel really cozy, livable, exciting and charming.”

Fireside The grand “treehouse” room contains a large sofa that embraces several seating areas, including one thatsurrounds two PhillipsCollection metal tablesthat look like cast tree stumps, appropriate for a room surrounded by aspens. | Photo: Dallas + Harris

Taylor and Podolak Knox achieved their goal partly through textures and color: “We love hide, we love leather, we love alpaca, we love mohair, all natural fibers and natural textures,” says Taylor. “And we love color. If this whole house were some big white envelope of furniture, it would have felt very clinical.”

One great addition to the treehouse room is the huge wool Fibreworks rug from Isberian Rugs in Basalt. “Plaid never goes out of style,” says Taline Isberian Dirkes, director of sales and purchasing at the company, which provided a number of rugs for the home. “This is a classic plaid, which is timeless and looks so good in a repeat design in this massive room. Plaids can be mountainy but preppy, too.”

Dining Room The homeowners’ existing square dining room table is surrounded by leather chairs from Four Hands (with dog Pearl seated on one), all under gorgeous pendant lights from Apparatus. | Photo: Dallas + Harris

Finding the right artwork for such a large residence was also important. “We wanted to make sure everything felt styled and curated,” says Taylor. “The artwork was very important because we didn’t want all the walls to stay white and massive. We wanted to add a lot of color and interest to the space, using different mediums, like the three-dimensional colors and depth to the artwork on the chinked wood wall in the living room.”

The surrounding foliage played a big role: The homeowners wanted to maximize the amount of green they see for much of the year, so the designers decided to bring those colors inside. “We didn’t want to take away from the view; we wanted to be cohesive with the view,” says Podolak Knox. The result is perfect for the family. “It’s really beautiful,” says the daughter. “When my friends come to visit, they feel this sense of relaxation when they walk in. It’s their favorite place. It’s such an escape, like nothing they’ve ever seen before—really grand, but warm at the same time.”

“Treehouse”Room The snaking fabric sofa from American Leather runs through much of the great room. “It’s a really dramatic room,” says Taylor. “In order to sit there and not feel like you’re in church, we created lots of intimate seating areas.” | Photo: Dallas + Harris

Kitchen For the large, open kitchen, Aspen Design House added a bright rug with pops of red and blue. “We were thrilled to furnish this house because the architecture was so good,” says Taylor. | Photo: Dallas + Harris

Hallway A Slim Aarons skiing photo perches against the dramatic stone walls and above a console table made from a bleached teak root. | Photo: Dallas + Harris

Breezeway In the same sun-drenched hall, Pearl lies on a custom-designed geometric rug in neutral browns and blacks. The three-dimensional art is made of papier-mâché and depicts skydivers parachuting to earth. | Photo: Dallas + Harris

Stairway In the stairwell bridging the original house with the addition, the designers added a fun photo titled “An Obedient Tiger” and a leather chair to “bring everything to a human scale,” says Taylor. | Photo: Dallas + Harris

Guest Bathroom Stone walls dominate a guest bathroom. Aspen Design House brought in a black- and-white photo of Tina Turner and an Isberian rug to add pop. | Photo: Dallas + Harris

Primary Bedroom A grid of wooden art, from the Phillips Collection, sits over a custom leather bed, which is framed by three custom stools and glass bubble pendant lights. | Photo: Dallas + Harris