Over the years, Los Angeles–based designer Parrish Cameron Robe has developed a strong bond with one particular family. She’s designed one home for the matriarch, two for a son, and four for the eldest daughter. Most recently, she completed her ninth property for the family: a Memphis estate for another daughter, who had just moved back to Tennessee after working for the family business in Washington, D.C.
The daughter and her family worked with Robe to build the house from the ground up, the first time they had engaged in such an undertaking. For the exterior, the clan enlisted the same architect and builder the wife’s sister had used on a prior house. The wife took inspiration from both mountain cabins and traditional suburban residences, combining the two for a sort of southern-style mountain retreat. Robe calls the design aesthetic “traditional southern fusion.”
The black kitchen cabinetry was the starting point for the home’s design.
Karyn Millet Photography
Inside, the black kitchen cabinets were one of the first details decided on. But they weren’t a given from the get-go. The homeowners have plenty of extended family nearby, and those relatives didn’t hold back when sharing their opinions. “It was a fun design challenge, to say the least,” Robe says. “We locked in on the black kitchen cabinets very early on, for example, but when the family was polled, it was a split decision! We won out in the end, and the cabinets—along with the Jennifer Shorto wallpaper in the dining room—were the inspiration for the rest of the house.”
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Along with the kitchen and dining room, Robe is particularly fond of the navy-blue library, which she describes as an inviting blend of “masculine and feminine, pretty and handsome.” These more stately spaces are balanced with a playful energy, imbued via touches like whimsical wallpaper in many of the powder rooms.
The three children can monkey around in the top-floor playroom.
Karyn Millet Photography
During the two-and-a-half-year design process, the family expanded from one child to three, so Robe also made sure to incorporate plenty of room for growth. The layout includes individual children’s rooms, a top-floor playroom, and tons of storage for all the miscellany of childhood. The parents, meanwhile, have a calm primary suite to which they can retreat. One standout here is the soaking tub in the tiled bathroom, set into an arched alcove and accompanied by a porthole window that lets the sunlight filter in.
Click here to see all the photos of the Memphis home.
Karyn Millet Photography
Authors
Tori Latham
Tori Latham is a digital staff writer at Robb Report. She was previously a copy editor at The Atlantic, and has written for publications including The Cut and The Hollywood Reporter. When not…