A House Meant to Feel Peaceful

When Bea Gates of Gates Interiors first came onto the Borchert project, the architectural direction was already clear. Dan Ensminger’s elevation pointed to a home rooted in a modern Mediterranean language, but for Gates, the interiors needed to take that foundation and refine it into something even quieter. “My immediate thought was we would take that into the interiors,” she says, “but because of some of the more contemporary design that Dan had on the features, I had a feeling we weren’t going to go quite as traditional Mediterranean inside.”

That instinct deepened as soon as she met the clients. “I realized that they were looking for a home that was very clean inside,” Gates says. “They loved the idea of natural materials, but they wanted to see those materials in a very clean, contemporary, calm approach.”

That word – calm – comes up often when Gates talks about the home, and with good reason. Every decision, from the material palette to the furnishings, was filtered through the desire to create an environment that felt serene, disciplined, and quietly luxurious. Nothing was meant to shout. Nothing was meant to feel excessive. Instead, the goal was a house that exhaled.

Designing Around Light, Material, and Mood

For Gates, calm is rarely created through one singular move. It is built layer by layer, often by drawing from the same qualities people find restorative outdoors. “What I find to be calming in most people’s mind is outdoor,” she explains. “And so we bring natural, sometimes raw material” into the home to create that feeling.

In the Borchert project, that meant leaning into natural wood tones, light stone, and a palette that stayed deliberately restrained. “We kept as much of the natural color of the wood that we used so that it felt, again, that brings you calmness when you can keep natural materials in kind of their natural state,” she says. “We didn’t do dark stained woods. We kept everything fairly light, fairly natural in the color palette of that raw material.”

That same philosophy guided the stone selections. While the exterior travertine spoke to the home’s Mediterranean influence, Gates was careful not to bring too much rustic texture inside. “We did a complimentary stone that was actually a Turkish beige marble that we used in the interiors kind of throughout,” she says. “Again, light, calm, color palette that we gained from nature.”

The result is a home that feels tonal rather than decorative. “When you have a palette that is monochromatic, where you use different tones but it’s all within the same color palette, then you really get that calmness,” Gates says. In this case, that meant a world of soft beiges, subtle greens, oak tones, and warm neutrals that speak to each other rather than compete.

A Mediterranean Influence, Reimagined

While the house clearly carries Mediterranean cues, Gates was never interested in leaning too literally into the style. There is no overdone rusticity here, no heavy-handed ornament, no attempt to recreate an old-world formula room by room. Instead, the interiors interpret the architectural language in a way that feels cleaner and more current.

“We weren’t going to go quite as traditional Mediterranean inside,” she says. “It needed to be a little bit more contemporary and modern in the interiors.”

That balance became especially important in the way the home connects to its setting. Gates describes Dan’s courtyard concept as one of the defining features of the house – a central outdoor space framed by the architecture and visible from nearly every room. “He created this courtyard that’s just such an incredible feature,” she says, adding that the idea was to enhance the indoor-outdoor feel while still keeping “that kind of minimalistic core throughout.”

It is a subtle but important distinction. The interiors do not simply mimic the exterior architecture. They continue its mood.

Making an Entertainment Wing Feel Elevated

One of the most interesting challenges in the home was the entertainment wing. Originally conceived with more lower-level amenity spaces, the plan evolved as pricing and square footage came into sharper focus. The eventual solution was to integrate an entire wing of the home that could accommodate billiards, lounging, media, and entertaining without ever feeling theme-driven or disconnected from the rest of the house.

That required discipline.

“When you approach the rooms, it has the same consistency and color palette,” Gates says. “It’s got beautiful linen drapes that are neutral. We kept the natural elements and the color palette the same consistently, so you don’t have that jarring effect.”

Even the game pieces were considered as part of the larger design language. “Down to the selection of the pool table and the shuffleboard, we were very conscious of the wood tones,” she says. “We integrated a bar in that space that again had the same natural tones. The marble was very muted, but still had this gorgeous veining that ran through it.”

The theater component received the same treatment. Rather than falling back on the usual cues of a dedicated media room, Gates pushed for something softer and more versatile. “We didn’t use the traditional theater chairs,” she explains. “We used loungers that don’t look like your parents’ recliner. We used linens and plush velvets on those fabrics.” The end result is a space that can function as a media room, but also as another beautifully designed living area when the house is full of guests.

The Unexpected Favorite

For all the attention paid to the kitchen, it was not ultimately the room that surprised Gates the most.

“My favorite unexpected space in the house is the keeping room off the kitchen,” she says. “I expected to love the kitchen because we put so much emphasis in the kitchen and just knew it was going to be stunning.” But the keeping room, with its softer scale and quieter intimacy, ended up making the strongest impression.

“I think because it is slightly cozier,” she says. “It’s got an arch ceiling in there that is cladded in wood, but we painted it, and it’s kind of an all white palette, but softer, deeper whites. Then you’ve got all the iron work in the sconces and the chandelier, and this stunning fireplace.”

What makes the room resonate, she suggests, is the precision of its scale and atmosphere. “I think it’s the coziness and the thoughtfulness to scale that just makes everyone love that room so much.”

Why Contrast Matters

For a house built around such a light palette, contrast became essential. Gates used steel and darker metal accents not to add weight, but to ground the interiors and give them definition. “On projects like this where a lot of the elements are lighter, I find it so important to have the darker tones,” she says. “Steel is a great way to get contrast in tone, but it still feels light.”

That contrast appears throughout the home, from the windows and fixtures to mirrors, cabinet hardware, coffee tables, and darker accent furnishings. “It just helped ground each space to have a little bit of that touch of dark in this lighter palette,” she says.

It is one of the reasons the interiors never drift into flatness. The palette may be restrained, but it is anything but one-note.

Collaboration at the Highest Level

Ask Gates what made the project successful, and she does not hesitate. The answer is the team.

“It’s imperative,” she says of collaboration. “I can’t speak highly enough of the team.” She describes Dunkum Homes as “so incredibly organized” and deeply thoughtful about bringing both the architect’s and designer’s perspectives into every phase of the process. Weekly meetings, fluid communication, and a shared willingness to solve problems before they became issues all contributed to a project that felt unusually seamless.

“You can’t achieve this level of design without a team that works cohesively like this team does,” Gates says. “It’s really a magical phenomenon when you get a team like this that all works so well together.”

That spirit of collaboration showed up in the smallest details as much as the biggest ones. Gates points specifically to the challenge of integrating wood and stone flooring throughout the home, particularly in the gallery halls, where curves and material transitions had to be resolved with absolute precision. “We met half a dozen times, maybe more, just to get that one component right,” she says. “It made all the difference.”

A Home That Holds Together

What Bea Gates achieved in the Borchert project is not simply a beautiful interior. It is an atmosphere – one built through restraint, natural materiality, thoughtful contrast, and a deep understanding of how the clients wanted to live.

There is elegance here, but it is never forced. There is luxury, but it feels quiet. There is cohesion, but never sameness. Every room seems to belong to the same story.

And in many ways, that may be the highest compliment an interior designer can earn: not that any one room steals the spotlight, but that the entire house feels whole.