Ten years ago, Anna E. Cottrell walked into a hillside home in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and knew in her bones that it was the one. She didn’t mind that the bungalow was a circa-1961 build, or that it hadn’t been restored for decades. “I immediately felt a very cool California vibe,” the creative director recalls.“I could imagine myself being happy and inspired here. The black concrete floors, clean lines, and floor-to-ceiling windows that wash the space in natural light really sealed the deal.” For the next decade or so, Anna’s prophecy came true. But when her home landed on the National Register of Historic Places, something inside her said it was time to bring the home back to life.
This time, Instagram predicted Anna’s future, pointing her to interior designer Whitney Romanoff of Fayetteville-based studio Meet West, whose work she had been following for a while. But as Anna recalls, finding an aesthetic wasn’t plain sailing. “It was the most chaotic brief ever, and Whitney was honestly a mind reader. I specifically remember her laughing at the number of French provincial and English country tear sheets I had pulled out,” she says. “After she helped distill my design references, the goal was to bring the house back to life using fabulous materials that the original architect would be proud of, while letting the original architecture shine.”
