A dining room in a Brookline brownstone is more than meets the eye.
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The dining room is a home office by day and a space for entertaining at night.

Wouldn’t it be lovely to work from a European botanical garden? Gabrielle Bove, of Opaline Interiors Studio (opalineinteriorsstudio.com), reimagined this dining room, which also serves as the client’s work-from-home space, in a Brookline brownstone with this romantic notion in mind. Her clients, a globetrotting couple, enlisted Bove’s help to renovate their condo into a comfortable space that reflected their love of travel, books, art, music and the natural world. “The dining room wallpaper was the basis for the color palette and informed all of the elements in the composition. It was one of the very first pieces I sourced because I felt it embodied our design,” she says. Bove chose darker furniture, which blends with the client’s own vintage dining table, and creates contrast and layers within the soft color palette. The mix of light and dark, modern and vintage became the perfect backdrop for the client’s own glass teardrop chandelier to shine.

After successfully establishing the aesthetic, Bove had to solve technical challenges within the dining room. By day it was to serve as a home office but needed to easily transition to a space for entertaining in the evening. Bove had to ensure that the room was functional and that office supplies were out of sight when not in use. She added custom built-ins on either side of the fireplace, one to house the printer and the other to act as a file cabinet. The shelving above became staging to showcase the client’s art, including one of their own sculptures. She also added a floor outlet right below the dining table for an easily accessible laptop charger.

So whether working by day or entertaining by night, the clients can look around their space and easily be transported to the cafés lining the streets in their favorite European city.