This 1790 Colonial Survived an Attack That Burned Most of Its Town to the Ground—Now It’s a Designer’s Dream House

Generally speaking, the timeline of buying a house often goes: Sign the deed, perform renovations, start the interior design, install, move in, and call it a day. Designer Brittany Bromley, however, threw that predictable chain of events out the window, though, when she bought her circa 1790 Colonial in Bedford, New York. “I looked at this home as a 30-year project,” she admits. “I wasn’t daunted by the amount of deferred maintenance, but certainly if I were to see it now, as opposed to 15 years ago, I might have had a little bit less energy to put towards it.”

The historic property is not just an architectural marvel that shows off the authentic style of the 18th-century, it’s a true and utter miracle. It was one of the few structures in town that actually survived the Burning of Bedford, which unfolded on July 11, 1779, during the American Revolutionary War, when British forces torched nearly every building in the Town of Bedford, New York. Bromley’s home, though, is a survivor.

The home’s historic background acted as the perfect setting for Bromley’s style, which she lovingly calls traditional with a kick, to shine. “I love traditional design, but I am always looking for ways to make things that are traditional and therefore sometimes have a connotation of being staid or older,” she says.

Photos by Annie Schlecter

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A Grand Entrance

Bromley’s love of all things tradition is most apparent in her entryway, which she dubbed The Great Connector because it serves as the vein from which all of the other rooms on the main floor stem. “One of the important things to me in this space was this traditionally formal feeling. I wanted you to know that you’d arrived,” she explains. “And one of the ways that we accomplished that was by having this floor painted out in a very traditional checkerboard.” Paired with the Schumacher wallpaper that boasts the faintest glimmer definitely achieved the grand entrance vibe she was going for here.

She also embraced one of the best original elements of the home: the traditional center hall colonial front door. “It is actually one single piece of woodwork,” Bromley notes. “This entire casing—the windows around it and everything about this—would have to be taken out or put back in in one single piece, which just simply isn’t done anymore.”

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Small Spaces With Big Personalities

Bromley is definitely not afraid of color, pattern, or texture, and that is abundantly clear in two small alcoves. The first, which is basically a mirror of the connecting space downstairs, is done in bold stripes that almost look like the inside of an old school circus tent. The second is in her daughter’s bedroom, where a shaggy rug, and antique desk chair, and sophisticated yet girly wallpaper mingle in the best way.

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Traditional, but Never Boring

Luckily, the living room was already in good condition when she took over the home. “One of the things about this room that I really loved is that it has these incredible old, very wide plank wood floors,” she says. In fact, she loved the original floors so much that they directed Bromley’s entire design concept for this room. “I worked with the incredible decorative painter, Mary Mead Evans, to figure out what sort of tone this floor would be, and it is the only room in our home that has this light wash on it.”

Next came the upholstery, which Bromley wanted to complement, but not blend, with the pale almost Parisian-inspired floors. “I started in this area with the concept of having a dark sofa, and I chose a very traditional George Smith sofa, and to me they’re the most beautiful, sort of old fashioned, wonderful traditional,” Bromley adds.

The best part of this room, though, is the double-sided curtain in the large doorway that leads to the second living room.

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The Art of Mixing Patterns

You’d never know that this room and the formal living room are actually two halves of one large space based on the massively different color schemes, but somehow, Bromley pulled it off. “This is by far sort of one of the more interesting parts of our home as it relates to color scheme,” she notes. “I think you probably know by now that I’m not afraid of color, and this room demonstrates that aptly.” The first thing design detail that she chose for this space was the marblized wallpaper from Lee Jofa, and the rest followed.

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A Garden-Inspired Escape

This powder room sits just off a glossy coral-painted wall, so Bromley wanted to give anyone so inclined to use this space some visual relief from the bright hues just outside. “I chose this incredible Pierre Frey wallpaper, which has some of those colors you’ll see in the hallway outside, but then it also has this really deep, dark feeling, which I love,” she adds. “Everything else about the space just feels very much like a jewel box, and I love that about it.”

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A Softer Side of Maximalism

Bromley made up for the lack of bright colors in the family room by making the upholstery work extra hard. “I used a floral Lee Jofa fabric as our hero in this room, and it has these sort of really interesting greens and blues and a little bit of this natural color,” she notes. The more neutral palette in here was also an intentional choice so as to let the tremendous amount of sunlight do all of the heavy-lifting.

“I wanted this room to feel quiet and sort of like a restful respite when it’s not a dark and gloomy day because it gets an extraordinary amount of light,” Bromley explains. “And so it was easy to sort of conceptualize it in a way that made it feel light and bright. And I didn’t have to use a ton of color in here.”

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A Bedoom Wrapped in Comfort

While still neutral, the primary bedroom features one moment of rich, sumptuous color and that is on the walls. “Actually, it’s a fabric from Bennison, which I had paper-backed and used as a wallcovering,” Bromley says. It’s a bold move in a small space, but not the only one she made. “Some people probably wouldn’t have done a canopy bed in here, but to me, this was sort of the thing that makes the room feel like it’s wrapping its arms around you,” and that was Bromley’s goal for this space.

What’s more, the bed itself is a special piece, as she snagged it at auction nearly two decades ago. “My mother actually helped me decoratively paint it in this amazing Swedish blue-gray.”

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A Kitchen With Library Appeal

While most people call their kitchen the heart of their home, in Bromley’s case, it’s true. “It was never going to be that sort of modern, gray-white expansive kitchen, so a few years ago, I decided that instead of making it feel like a kitchen, it might need to feel like a library,” she admits. Her first order of business? A white silk wallapaper, which may not be the most practical for a bustling kitchen, but Bromley has no regrets.

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Welcome to Narnia

If you’re thinking this dining room, complete with three-dimensional papier-mâché florals, is giving major Narnia vibes, you’d be correct. In fact, that’s what her children call this room. “The artisans at Casa Augusto and I came up with this sort of tree of life pattern, which is a set of branches and bas-relief panels that travel all the way around the space,” Bromley explains. There are 67 of them, and they were all pieced together on-site. “Originally, I had thought that I might do this in a color, but the actual natural color of the papier-mâché is so appealing to me. It’s really quiet, it’s really calm, and it’s very warm,” she adds.