Before and After: Designer Susannah Holmberg Transforms Bungalow

Making Change

In Salt Lake City, designer Susannah Holmberg applies her vision of sophisticated simplicity to a small bungalow, transforming it into a light and airy haven

Downsizing into a smaller home doesn’t mean sacrificing style or comfort; instead, it offers a unique opportunity to live creatively and intentionally. By moving into a more compact space, one can focus on quality over quantity, investing in key pieces and decorative details that bring joy and elegance to your daily life. This shift allows for a curated living experience, in which every item has a purpose and every corner tells a story.

Enter Susannah Holmberg, a visionary interior designer renowned for transforming spaces, large and small, into personalized havens. One of Holmberg’s recent projects involves helping an empty-nesting couple downsize from their large family home to a brick, Tudor-meets-bungalow style home in Salt Lake City. The challenge was a dark and choppy interior with notably small rooms, the designer explains. With a sharp eye for detail and a passion for sophisticated simplicity, Holmberg crafted a design plan that blends minimalism with elegance, ensuring that every square foot of the 1,800-square-foot house is utilized to its fullest potential and is infused with a look the designer tags as “classic, light and airy.” Through clever design strategies, Holmberg demonstrates that downsizing can be an exercise in thoughtful living letting big style thrive in small spaces. 

Entry

“The entry makes a statement, right from the get-go,” says Holmberg, who was inspired by the tree-shaded property when she chose Saint Sebastian Wallpaper from Rebel Walls to deliver verdant hues and a botanical motif to the welcoming space. She accentuated window casings and trim by painting them a gray-green hue that nods to the wallpaper and wooded landscape. Undressed windows allow views and light to flow inside unobstructed. Nearby, an alluring tablescape mixes periods and forms atop a new console from CB2. “We love the richness of burl wood,” she explains. 

Outstanding Detail:Painted a complementary accent color, the contrasting trim accentuates the wallpaper and elevates the entry’s every-detail-counts decor. 

Living Room

A soothing monochromatic palette of cream and ivory tones calm and unify the interior. To simplify and open the living room, Holmberg transformed the dated, slate-tiled fireplace with plastered drywall and a blackened steel firebox frame. She removed trim along the upper walls to allow the beauty of the curved transition to the ceiling to draw the eye upward and painted the walls and ceiling with the same color for a seamless effect. Subtly contrasting trim and window casing underscore their classic lines. The curved sofa and round coffee table visually soften the rectilinear room. New wood floors boast traditional-width white oak planks, and the chrome-framed chair from 1stDibs is upholstered in a plush velvet from Schumacher.  

Outstanding Detail: Serving a corner reading chair, a single pendant strategically delivers a vertical line to the design. “Visually, it breaks up the room’s horizontal planes,” Holmberg explains.

Kitchen Hood

Echoing the home’s original architectural arches, the kitchen’s new cabinets feature an arched detail on the range hood. Porcelain tiles boast an imperfect, handmade look and are arranged in a timeless offset pattern. The countertops are a classic stone: Bianco Carrara Marble. 

Outstanding Detail: Holmberg chose Portola Paint’s “Pumice” for the kitchen cabinets and repeated the color elsewhere in the home to foster a sense of continuity
and tranquility.

Dining Room

The dining room was once divided into two spaces and separated from the kitchen by a cabinet-inset partition. Today, the space is open and airy with a strong connection to the adjoining kitchen, where flush mount ceiling lights from RW Guild provide a charming alternative to banal can lights. A branch-like chandelier by Snelling Studio creates a sculpture-like moment over the dining table surrounded by vintage Thonet chairs. Sheer linen draperies add a sense of softness. 

Outstanding Detail: Holmberg hung the drapery rod high on the wall “to draw the eye upward and make the ceiling feel higher,” she explains.  

Bar

A new, storage-rich bar occupies the end of the revamped dining space. Dark-stained oak cabinets and open shelves deliver bold contrast to the bar’s light-toned marble countertop and porcelain tile backsplash. “Contrast makes a dark grounding note so things feel balanced and not washed out,” Holmberg says. 

Outstanding Detail: “The bar speaks to the kitchen but is not part of it,” says Holmberg, who repeated the kitchen’s offset porcelain tile and marble countertop in the new built-in bar. “They nod to the kitchen but the bar’s dark cabinets create a more classic, masculine feel.

Powder Room

“The powder room is a place where you can go more maximal and take risks,” says Holmberg, who punched up the tight space with dark-painted wainscoting and a Lewis & Wood leafy-patterned wallpaper. The space-saving design of the wall-mounted sink is ideal for the small room and a single sconce from Huey Light Shop delivers an unexpected shot of asymmetry, as well as a charming shaded form.  

Outstanding Detail: The wall-mounted faucet frees up countertop space and promotes an uncluttered, streamlined look that contributes to the room’s spacious feel. 

Primary Bathroom

“We wanted to make this a special spot and continue the arches theme,” says Holmberg, who created an arch for the entrance to the shower/bath combination. A classic wood vanity with raised details and a dark, soapstone countertop delivers a masculine vibe. Black-and-white floor tile laid in a basketweave pattern grounds the room with a classic motif. Streamlined sconces consume little visual space and cast a glare-free glow at eye level. 

Outstanding Detail: Holmberg tiled the arched entrance into the shower to accentuate its arced form and to add a surprising design detail. She integrated a hidden curtain track into the back side of the feature. 

How it Works

Finishes and Fabrics

Holmberg chose a mix of metals—aged brass, chrome, blackened steel—to marry her compositions and to make the spaces feel more gathered than decorated. “It’s like they have been there forever,” she says. The same is true of varied wood tones, from white oak floors to dark side tables and a burlwood console. “Contrast adds a grounding note.” Holmberg also prioritized texture over pattern when selecting fabrics for the tight spaces. “Patterns can become too busy very quickly.”

Furnishings and Fixtures

“There is nothing extra here. Selections were driven by the size of the house,” Holmberg says. She rejected floor rugs to keep the decor open and larger feeling, and she included curved furnishings to help soften the squared-off architecture. Curated lighting fixtures layer the interior with comforting light while delivering a variety of eye-catching forms. “Every piece has to count,” the designer says. 

Color

To foster the interior’s serene, harmonious ambiance, Holmberg created a palette of soothing creams, ivories and beiges and used it throughout to unify the decor. Then she added hits of ochre and green. “Rich and colorful choices would be too much for the small spaces, so it made sense to keep it clean, bright and soft,” she explains.

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