Brittany Greenwood strolls through the maze of rattan and bamboo furnishings in the barn behind her rural Fort Myers home. It\u2019s well past dinner time, and she\u2019s already changed into sweats for the night, but she flips the lights on in her appointment-only showroom for a returning client who\u2019s just flown in for season and can\u2019t wait to shop. She\u2019s known to pour a glass of wine or shots of tequila as she shows off her trove of furniture.<\/p>\n
Brittany\u2019s Bamboo Barn operates as her oversized treasure chest. Gilt mirrors and lacquered chairs glow among honey-toned textures and saturated ceramics filling the rows of Brittany\u2019s curated inventory. \u201cI guess I\u2019m kind of like Kevin Costner. If you build it, they will come. But it\u2019s not a baseball field. It\u2019s Old Florida regency furniture,\u201d she laughs. Clients regularly trek an hour or more from Port Royal and Boca Grande to shop her concentration of furnishings born of Florida\u2019s early resort culture.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Though never codified academically as a distinct style, the aesthetic is often referred to as Palm Beach regency. Brittany bristles at the term\u2019s limiting nature, pinning it only on the Sunshine State\u2019s east coast. \u201cI think the West Coast is the forgotten stepchild,\u201d she says. The genre proliferated throughout South Florida in the 20th century, wherever seasonal wealth met subtropical climate. Drawing on the high-gloss confidence of Hollywood regency, designers translated stately Neoclassical silhouettes into breathable bamboo, rattan and sawgrass. Citrusy hues, tactile finishes and playful coastal allusions loosened the mood, while the genre\u2019s structured forms kept the pieces elegant. She coined the term Old Florida regency to describe her stock. For Brittany, preserving the style is part of a larger desire to honor Florida history as a whole\u2014the environment, the culture, the family memories.<\/p>\n
A Kentucky native, Brittany first came to Southwest Florida as a child in the 1970s, visiting her great-grandparents in their Fort Myers Beach mobile home\u2014a place built for gathering, not display, filled with bamboo tables, shell lamps and palm tree motifs. \u201cI can\u2019t tell you how many of these chairs I saw as a little girl,\u201d she says, pointing to a wicker armchair.<\/p>\n
She moved to Fort Myers Beach permanently with her mother, Sondra, in 1988. The duo opened and ran three furniture consignment shops in the coastal town, where Brittany sharpened her instincts and developed a near-immediate sense of what works. She found herself drawn to the Florida regency pieces, enamored by their warmth and timelessness. \u201cIt connects design directly to Florida\u2019s history and lifestyle in a way that still feels fresh today,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Brittany sources, restores and sells everything from daybeds to framed prints online\u2014through her website and via reputable retailers Chairish and 1stDibs\u2014and by appointment in her oak-shaded barn. \u201cPeople will come in here and go, \u2018Oh my gosh, what a cute hobby you have,\u2019\u201d she says. Brittany stiffens at the reference, which reduces a decade of expertise to something crafty. It\u2019s her livelihood.<\/p>\n
Her decisive nature extends beyond business. She married her husband, Jeffrey, within two months of their first date, and two decades later, she credits him for her successes. She bought the 10-acre property in 2019 at his urging and launched the showroom the following spring. After crunching numbers, Jeffrey gave her a challenge: Bring in at least $8,000 a month for the first three months. \u201cJeff had a great idea. I\u2019ve gotta tell him every day he was right\u2014and it sucks,\u201d she says with a laugh. He remains steadily by her side as the business grows, overseeing the operational and technical side.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In early days of the business, the pandemic limited in-person shopping, so Brittany turned to social media. \u201cAnytime I would post it on Instagram, it was gone,\u201d she says. Within weeks, she was shipping furniture to the Bahamas, California, Australia and the Mediterranean. Her timing coincided with the long-dismissed style\u2019s resurgence alongside a renewed interest in vintage furnishings and a cooling toward beach-house minimalism. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Her work has since been featured in Veranda and Design + Decor. Last year, Brittany\u2019s Bamboo Barn was named one of House Beautiful\u2019s Best Home Shops of 2025. The year prior, she was accepted as a vendor on 1stDibs, a luxury marketplace known for its rigorous vetting process. She\u2019s also become a go-to source for designers hunting vintage Florida furnishings, like Bahamian design titan Amanda Lindroth. \u201cThis is a joke, right?\u201d she said when the designer first called her. Amanda is credited with elevating the subtropical furnishings from nostalgic relics to coveted acquisitions for high-end homes. In Southwest Florida, Brittany works with Julia Liegeois and Annie Brahler, though many of her local homeowners come directly to the barn. \u201cI built this place so people could come,\u201d she says. \u201cPeople come here and don\u2019t wanna leave.\u201d<\/p>\n
Most of Brittany\u2019s inventory dates from the 1930s through the 1980s, spanning the genre\u2019s evolution, from foundational prewar refinement through midcentury panache and the later years, when the style spread beyond winter estates. A handful of 19th-century bamboo pieces reflect early influences of the style.<\/p>\n
A network of buyers scans estate sales nationwide on her behalf, flagging pieces, even when their condition is compromised. She restores about 90% of her inventory through a process refined over years of research and trial and error. At minimum, that means scrubbing years of grime and re-caning worn seats. \u201cI\u2019m not going to over-refinish those,\u201d she says, alluding to a set of 1940s Adirondacks. \u201cI love the whole rustic vibe and the distressing.\u201d At its most exacting, Brittany and Jeffrey may take a piece apart to stabilize the frame, re-wrapping joints in the original pattern, and rebuilding the finish slowly so the material regains its natural warmth rather than looking stripped or newly coated.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Many of the pieces in the barn have already lived several lives\u2014through 1950s socialite homes, hotel lobbies, estate sales and long periods of neglect. Brittany\u2019s restoration work absorbs that history. Furnishings leave the barn carrying their age lightly, their lineage still legible. For Brittany, all the stories circle back home. \u201cOld Florida style feels like my childhood,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s important to me to keep the past in the present for as long as I can breathe life into these pieces.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brittany Greenwood strolls through the maze of rattan and bamboo furnishings in the barn behind her rural Fort…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178706,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210,57432,84526,84528,57431,84527,79575,57435],"class_list":{"0":"post-178705","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cape-coral","8":"tag-cape-coral","9":"tag-cape-coral-headlines","10":"tag-cape-coral-news","11":"tag-design-inspiration","12":"tag-entertaining","13":"tag-home-decor-boutiques","14":"tag-interior-designers","15":"tag-lauren-amalia-redding","16":"tag-march-2026","17":"tag-outdoor-spaces"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}