Room of the Day: Bright Transitional Home Office Serves Double Duty

This room’s main purpose is to serve as a home office, but because it’s off the home’s living room, guests also spend time in it during get-togethers with family and friends. Interior designer Jamie Keskin worked throughout the home with her client, and the two found an easy, bright and light style and carried from room to room. Transitional style can be an all-encompassing and confusing look to define, but Keskin helps us get a better understanding of it with this cheery room.

Photos by Greg Perko Photography

Room at a Glance
What happens here: This is a home command central and a home office for telecommuting, as well as an extra seating area during get-togethers.
Location: Wellesley, Massachusetts
Size: 150 square feet (14 square meters); 10 feet by 15 feet (3 meters by 4.5 meters)

Though Keskin worked on rooms throughout the house, this was the only one that was a truly blank slate. However, she and her client agreed to keep the existing built-in bookcases, right down to the blue paint. They are great for corralling all of the office clutter and maintaining a clean, paperless desk. This, in turn, makes transforming the room into a seating area much easier; all the client does is drag the desk chair over near the love seat during parties, and the entertainment area is complete.


Transitional is a tricky style to define sometimes, but Keskin sees it as a style with traditional roots that’s lighter, brighter and more streamlined. For example, she mixed a traditional bamboo desk chair with a clean-lined, classic modern Parsons desk in here. The bright aqua color of the chair is unexpected and makes it a standout piece.

Wallpaper: Gibralter, Thibault; chair: Zinc Door; wastebasket, glass lamp: Target; Parsons Desk: West Elm


“If I were going for traditional in here, I might have chosen a French settee, a busier floral and a fussier wallpaper,” Keskin says. Instead she mixed a more streamlined love seat and a brightly colored, large-print abstract floral from Romo. A woven coffee table and midcentury-modern-inspired side tables freshen things up.

In fact, the floral print was the jumping-off point for everything else in the room. “I wanted to pick something inspiring,” she says. “I pulled all of the colors from that print.” She used the fabric on the throw pillow and the custom Roman shade.

Savvy budget balancing allowed splurging on wallpaper by Thibault and the aforementioned floral fabric. These two elements provided the base for the room, and the design jumped off from there. The lamps are from Horchow, the mirror is from Ballard Designs, the love seat and side tables are from Crate & Barrel, and the coffee table is from Pottery Barn.





The bone inlay on the Parsons desk is another part of the transitional balance — it’s a more traditional detail on a modern piece. The glass lamp helps give the desk a clean look. It also helped balance the budget; Keskin found it at Target.

The designer and her client found the floral art print, which complements the floral fabric, on Etsy, and had it framed. A brass snail found at an antiques store serves as a cute mascot for the room — you may have caught him moving around during the photo shoot.

“Transitional has traditional roots but is brighter and fresher,” Keskin says. “It’s a real mix of the very traditional and very modern.”

See more of the transitional mix in other rooms in this home

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