There is a room in a house in Westport, Connecticut, that glows green at night. It is lacquered floor to ceiling in deep emerald, and when the light drops and the trees outside go dark, it appears to float among the branches like something from a story. The family’s children named it the treehouse almost immediately. The name stuck, and the room has since become the household’s unofficial evening headquarters, a place for board games, long conversations, and the kind of atmosphere that is easier to feel than to explain.
This is, in miniature, what The 1818 Collective, the design practice founded by Kristin Fine and Analisse Taft-Gersten, was aiming for across the entire house. “A jewel box in the woods where every night feels like the beginning of a story and the party is already in motion,” as Fine puts it. The house sits on a rocky natural terrace in Westport, perched above a nature preserve, enveloped by protected forest. It began as a midcentury ranch that had been expanded piecemeal over the years and arrived at the studio as a home with good bones, a dramatic hillside site, and a family, two parents, two school-age children, a much-loved dog, who wanted something that matched the quiet drama of the landscape around it.
The renovation took two years and touched everything: internal layout, finishes, landscape, and the relationship between the building and the hillside it sits on. Rather than fighting the topography, the designers used it. The house now unfolds across four to five staggered levels, stepping gently down the slope across roughly 5,000 square feet, the rooms expanding and contracting with the land, opening onto light and views at unexpected moments. “We followed the movement of daylight, allowing it to guide the mood and materiality of each space,” Fine explains. “The result is a home shaped by nature, family, and the gentle push and pull between openness and intimacy.”
The clients were, by the designers’ account, the ideal collaborators. Worldly, curious, devoted hosts with an instinct for beautiful objects and a genuine attachment to the original house. “Their devotion to preserving and elevating the original home, rather than erasing it, immediately resonated with us,” Fine says. “They were enchanted by the site, a natural terrace carved into the woods with sweeping views into a nature preserve, and wanted a home that matched that quiet drama.” That commitment to the existing structure shaped every decision that followed, including the choice to keep the midcentury spirit of the architecture alive even as the interiors moved somewhere richer and more layered.
The palette was drawn directly from the forest outside. Each room was given its own emotional temperature: the deep green of the lacquered library, the sun-warmed tones of the kitchen where walnut cabinetry meets Quattro Stagioni marble, and the quiet neutrals of the living room and primary suite that offer breathing room between more expressive spaces. “We aimed to create a home that feels warm, worldly, and deeply connected to its natural setting, a place that embraces you, invites conversation, and slows time,” Fine says. “Through layered materials, sculptural lighting, expressive colors, and thoughtful transitions, we created a space that feels both grounded in the landscape and elevated by the family’s global sensibility.”
The materials throughout the house reinforce that groundedness. Wood appears in both architectural elements and furnishings. Richly veined stones, waxed plaster walls, artisanal tile from Cle Tile, and woven textiles from Zak+Fox and Rosemary Hallgarten layer a tactile, collected quality that feels accumulated rather than installed. Specialty metal finishes on the cabinetry were handled by KAMP Studios, whose plaster work also appears in the living room and primary bathroom. The kitchen backsplash was custom made by Dumais Made; the millwork throughout the house by HenryBuilt.
The furniture mix is similarly layered, moving fluidly between vintage finds and chosen contemporary pieces. In the living room, a Pierre Paulin armchair sits alongside a sofa by Pierre Augustin Rose in Pierre Frey mohair, sourced through The Invisible Collection, and Lance Thompson stools upholstered in vintage velvet from ALT for Living. A custom mural by Olivia Cognet anchors one wall. In the library, Laura Gonzalez dining chairs in Pierre Frey mohair surround a vintage Quadrono table, and a Laclaux Baba armchair in Schumacher‘s Tutsi fabric holds a corner. Lighting throughout is sculptural and deliberate: Apparatus sconces and flushmounts recur across several rooms; a Cristina Prandoni Milano wall lamp adds warmth to the library; an Anna b lantern anchors the primary bathroom alongside Articolo sconces and an Agape freestanding tub.
The entry sequence sets the tone before any of this reveals itself. A Pierre Gonalons Halo Mirror by Ronit Anderson faces an Allegra Hicks Hestia sconce from The Invisible Collection. Vintage console, custom wall hooks by Blanche Jelly, a woven ottoman by Pauline Esparon. It is a room that asks you to slow down before you have taken your coat off.
“Our inspiration began with the clients, their reverence for the wooded site, their love of gathering friends, their global curiosity, and their delight in beautiful, meaningful objects,” Fine reflects. What The 1818 Collective built around those qualities is a house that feels genuinely inhabited, shaped by the specific rhythms of one family, in one forest, across four seasons. The children named the green room the treehouse, and in doing so, they described the whole house: somewhere slightly elevated from ordinary life, where the outside is always present and the evenings tend to go on a little longer than planned.
