It’s ridiculous that I hadn’t been there before, Gentle Readers. The Greenbrier resort in West Virginia.
(This picture is from their website. There were no tulips in evidence when we visited.)
The Greenbrier is something of a pilgrimage for interior designers. Decorating doyenne Dorothy Draper ruled the roost from around 1946 until the late ’50s, and the resort is a shrine to her. But I’m not going to give you a history lesson; Carleton Varney’s book Romance & Rhododendrons does that quite well if you’re interested.
Instead, I’m going to focus on, what else? The interior design. You may be surprised to learn that not everything made my love list. But here’s what did.
1. The lobby.
The main entrance to the Greenbrier is a fancy split-level.
From there, the lobby is up.
I LOVE — I mean, LOVE — the black and white checkerboard floors (you know that about me), the red and aqua combo, and the vibrant floral chintz. Together. I love it all.
2. The repetition of pattern.
You see it everywhere, but this is a particularly fun example. It’s a ladies’ lounge!
3. The Victorian Writing Room.
A gem of a room. I love red and green together, and the giant faux-bois pattern on the rug is amazing.
4. The chandeliers.
5. The scale in general.
Big. Everywhere. Which leads to more than a few “Alice in Wonderland meets Las Vegas” moments, but for the most part, the huge scale of the spaces and patterns is super fun.
Huge pediments in the Lobby Bar:
Huge windows…I actually hate the bow/valence concept here, but I’m including this blurry picture of John so you can see just how gigantic the windows are.
And a huge design on the carpeting in the lower gallery:
All of that said, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that parts of the interior design just felt lazy. There’s a whole lotta “Oh, all blues match!” and “Let’s put four random patterns together and see what happens!” Pretty rich coming from me, right? But there were just too many instances in which things looked off instead of whimsical.
For example, what, pray tell, is this weak, powdery blue sofa doing in the drama-filled lobby? Color-wise, it doesn’t hold up in this context.
Here, a matchier pink wall wouldn’t make my teeth hurt the way the coral does:
In the “Clock Lobby,” we’ve got all sorts of clashiness going on. The green of the rug has nothing — I mean nothing — to do with the sofa upholstery. Or the teal chairs. And in real life, that minty sofa isn’t awesome with the aqua stripes on the walls.
We also have a scale issue here. Those lamps — not joking — are at least 4′ tall. The tables they’re on are appropriate for them. But the tables and lamps together DWARF the sofa. The upholstered pieces are clinging to the coffee table like a life raft, and the tables and lamps and stripes are singing with the architecture. It’s weird.
Finally, you have a very long hallway of THIS:
Who? Who thought this was a good idea?
The combo of the yellow trellis wallpaper, the medium-toned wood, and the rhododendron bud carpeting is an abomination. The paneling looks cheap (it’s the color, I think), and the wallpaper looks left over from another project. The carpeting is fine in general…I just feel bad for it here. It’s saying, “I know, I know…I was just coming in from another room, minding my own business, when these WALLS happened. Just keep looking down, keep looking down.”
The space doesn’t look intentional. And that’s my whole thing: if you’re going to take design risks, you’ve got to OWN them. I don’t know if Dorothy Draper actually put this hallway together, but if she did, I guarantee it was at the end of a very long day.
But. We’re not going to let those few examples deter from the wonderful whimsy of the Greenbrier overall. It is a cheekily grand, uplifting place that reminds us not to take ourselves too seriously. And that’s a reminder we all need from time to time ;)
Annie Elliott Design is based in Washington, D.C. We’re experts in creating gorgeous, color- and pattern-filled homes and telling people what to do in the nicest way possible.
