Lorie Peters Lauthier’s master suite sitting room.
By Karin Tanabe
Lorie Peters Lauthier wears her signature Chuck Taylors in the sitting room of her master suite. Photo by Joseph Allen.
With unique touches in every corner of her home, art collector Lorie Peters Lauthier knows the importance of infusing her personal spaces with character. She once had a fireplace torn out of her dining room wall, decided to keep the space unfinished, and used the remaining plaster as an art frame.
The same spirit of creativity and penchant for personally designed furniture and accessories induced Peters Lauthier to redesign her master suite. When she first moved in, it was split into two seperate, sterile rooms.
To remedy this, she broke through the walls to create open arches that united both rooms. Heavy white doors to the hallway were replaced with antique wood and frosted glass swinging doors with antique French handles. Two bookcases on the rear walls were transformed by arches, glass shelves, and recessed lighting, and then connected by an antique Italian mantelpiece centered by an oil painting of an enchanting cockatoo.
To make the room brighter, she faux-painted the walls green to coax the colors of her garden inside.
Design touches are second nature to Peters Lauthier, who founded her first business, designing and manufacturing fine jewelry, at the age of 15.
Later, she worked for 16 years as a freelance producer of commercials before founding and running a London-based international sales and marketing firm.
Selling the company after a decade, she moved to Paris, where she began to study and then collect contemporary art, and then to the Washington, D.C. area so that her son could attend a special school for the speech impaired. His presence is strongly felt in her bedroom, whish is full of family photos and childhood drawings.
Unique elements, as varied as collectible iconic chairs and flea market finds, unite to form a very personal whole for Peters Lauthier, who enjoys spending winter days lying in front of the fireplace with a book in hand and the outside world feeling very far away.
