A Dining Room Refresh with House of Hackney

We’ve called The Austin Tudor home now for three years. During that time, we’ve made some small aesthetic updates to my original design plans, but our home has largely felt complete. The one space, however, that’s given me some pause is our dining room. I originally loved its dark and moody energy, but after a few seasons of living with the mature trees shading the windows combined with welcoming our daughter, Kamryn, I started to realize this room was ready for something different.

Design: Anastasia Casey | Photography: Madeline Harper

Listening to What the Room Needed

Our dining room was first designed with formality in mind. Our previous home had a more casual, open concept dining space, so I was thrilled to have a dedicated dining room as the backdrop to all our entertaining. I wanted the space to feel incredibly moody and almost library-esque using built-in bookcases in lieu of a traditional sideboard. 

A large part of the space’s moodiness came from the wallpaper selection. I chose a dark green textured vinyl wallpaper from Elitis France that brought so much depth and movement. But I designed the house during winter, when the leaves weren’t on our 30-foot trees outside the windows. In winter, the dining room has nice, bright, even light. But come mid-March and all through November, the room is pretty drastically shaded by the beautiful Empress Tree outside the window. While the shade is a huge bonus for keeping our backyard 10-12 degrees cooler than the front of the house, it really made the dining room quite dark.

Another shift in my perspective came after Kam’s arrival. I started to feel that the formality of the dining room didn’t fit our new stage of life. As kids do, Kam had shifted the energy of our home and I wanted to inject some lightness and playfulness into the main floor without losing its sophistication.

View the dining room before

Discovering Hollyhocks by House of Hackney

That search for a more playful design direction led me to House of Hackney. I’d spotted their Hollyhocks wallpaper in another project and knew pretty quickly that it was what our dining room needed. I ordered samples and narrowed it down to the ‘Flax’ colorway with its sundrenched tones that played really well with the room’s Tate Olive trim. 

Aesthetics aside, another huge selling point was the House of Hackney brand themselves. The company is certified B Corp and deeply committed to ethical and sustainable production. Based in Britain, they celebrate heritage craftsmanship and focus on small, made-to-order production to minimize waste. I’ve followed their brand for years, and was so excited to finally bring some House of Hackney into the Tudor.

A Room That Finally Feels Right

Once we installed the Hollyhocks wallpaper, our space felt instantly lightened and lifted. It hits that perfect note of elevated whimsy, and unsurprisingly, it’s become Kam’s new favorite space in the house. She lights up whenever we pass through and loves pointing to the flowers and tracing her little fingers across all the colors. 

Shifting the dining room from moody to whimsical has made a world of difference in the overall feeling of our main floor, and I’m so glad we trusted that instinct. Sometimes a space just needs to evolve with you, all you have to do is take the leap.