Winsome Home’s young, versatile designer, Erin Lima, explores color in her 2002 home.
Portait photography by Jenny Chok | Home photography by Genny Moller
Like many young designers, Erin Lima has a lot of experience delivering on projects for clients that take a reserved use of color—heavy on neutrals with a single, more muted color here or there. But when she and her husband, Daniel, decided to move to an early 2000s home in Tualatin for her daughter Anita’s schooling, she had a new opportunity to experiment with bolder hues.
“The house was a secondary thing for us,” says Lima, principal designer at Winsome Home. “It was a lot for us to move to the suburbs, but having such a blank slate has required a nice level of creativity.”
The 2002 house she shares with family is classic for the era—designed with larger spaces in mind and more open layouts, and with elements now considered dated, like bullnose corners and orange-peel walls, strange arches, Tuscan fixtures, and can lights.
“The whole thing is kind of Mar-a-Lago meets Tudor style,” Lima says. “But I actually love this style of homes and think they get a really bad rap.”
What Lima likes to think of as “Millennial Design” factors into her home in a big way. Many of her clients are Millennials who grew up in these early-2000s spaces and need help with grappling with updating some of the more difficult design vestiges of the era.
These homes don’t need a lot of walls moved or taken down, and the structural challenges are few, she says. The layouts are good, and they tend to serve larger families that need more space. But that openness requires out-of-the-box thinking and a holistic approach.
“It’s usually: I’ve got this weird column,” Lima says. “With these homes, I can spend more of my time bringing a vibe to the spaces.” The goal is often to transform run-of-the-mill spaces into rooms touched with personality.
Red serves as a through-line throughout Lima’s home.
Rethinking Color
Figuring out how color factors into this process, and how it contributes to an overall energy in a space, is a big part of what guides Lima’s design work.
“I understand why people paint all white, but it just doesn’t do anything for the overall feel,” Lima says. “I’m that person who comes in and brings the character to those spaces.”
Her own home shows just how that works. Once her family moved in and she got going, the project came together very quickly, with exuberant spaces built upon a restrained palette of reds, blues, whites, blacks and, occasionally, green.
“I love color,” Lima says. “I was interested in bringing it in through pattern and texture, too, not just the walls.”
Every room in the home was a chance to experiment.
First she brought in LVP to create better flow (and accommodate her dogs) and warm up the spaces. Her office, located in a room at the front of the house, became an oasis of pinks (which she considers a red) with nods to glam city life like neon lights and Lucite touches.
For the dining room, which her family only uses during gloomy weather (eating outside otherwise), she chose a bold, crane-themed wallpaper paired with rust and navy.
An eating nook brings a high-low mix of inexpensive IKEA bookshelves with red-painted caned chairs and striped walls she painted herself.
In the playroom, a white backdrop allows the colorful world of childhood to pop, while in her daughter’s bedroom, the mood is serene and feminine with soft colors and textures.
A family room features a beloved item—soccer icon Pelé’s jacket—and a range of greens that read as neutrals.
“With my clients, it’s very thought out, but in my own spaces, I tend to work spontaneously,” she says.
A bold wallpaper by Milton & King brings a dynamic and energizing feeling to a room used mostly in Oregon’s rainy season.
Works in Progress
Lima loves the colors of the 1960s and 1970s, and takes a lot of inspiration from city life (even in the suburbs).
“I never want my influences to seem too obvious, but it has to be colorful,” Lima says. “Overall, the look has to be clean and composed and simple.”
Next on tap? The kitchen—a giant project often left for later with newer homes.
“I wouldn’t feel good tearing out materials that are in good shape and less than a few years old,” she says.
For that big moment, she is putting together a mood board that draws on some of the elements of one of her favorite places, the Cafe Parisien in Belfast, Ireland. Upon a neutral base of blacks, whites, and a bit of grey, she will work in her beloved Old World blues and reds.
The space will explore color in a similar way to how she has envisioned it for other parts of the home—always avoiding maximalism by working with a warmer color and a desaturated palette.
It’s part and parcel to Lima’s focus in general: creating a globally influenced, big-picture vision with many moving parts—not surprising for a designer who worked for a decade as a strategic planner for Portland’s top advertising firms.
“I bring the taste and the client brings the style,” Lima says.
