How Mixing Materials Brings Luxury to Interior Design

MILAN HAS A GRITTY GLAMOUR that doesn’t endear itself to every visitor, but on my first visit I was surprised how much I liked it. From the imposing, imperial stone behemoth of Milano Centrale train station, I walked down the dusty, grand streets straight to the Villa Necchi Campiglio, a 1930s house and walled garden set like an emerald in the heart of Milan.

I’d wanted to go ever since I saw Luca Guadagnino’s 2009 film “I Am Love,” in which the house served as both the set and soul of the story, a restrained but sumptuous vision of Italian architecture. Designed by fashionable Milanese architect Piero Portaluppi and built between 1932 and 1935 for the wealthy industrialist Angelo Campiglio, his wife and her sibling (the Necchi sisters) the house affirms that the jewels of Milan are often found behind lock and key.

Thanks to heritage foundation FAI (Fondo Ambiente Italiano), the luxurious glass doors of the once-private residence now admit visitors. As I wound my way through its garden, golden light filtered through century-old plane trees, dappling Japanese anemones and ferns. Bands of marble, granite and ceppo stone wrap the facade of the home, its otherwise forebodingly glamorous entry softened by semicircular steps. I braced myself and entered.

Elegance is rarely more faultless than the home’s soaring ground floor, from its walnut and rosewood parquet to its briar-root panelled walls and broad staircase with Greek-key balustrade. Works by Morandi and Modigliani, found throughout, add another layer of refinement.

“The story of the house tells the story of Milan,” said Marco Fincato of the FAI. “It combines the power of industry, fashion and design.” Portaluppi’s gift was mixing luxurious materials and references, from the sensuality of Art Deco to the rigour of Italian Rationalist architecture. Rationalism was essentially a fascist movement, said Mr. Fincato, and while Mussolini’s regime proved ruinous for Italy, the resulting influx of money and power gave architects a brief chance to shine.

Shine, the Villa Necchi does. A wall of brass-trimmed, double-paned windows defines the sparkling glass veranda. As if in a greenhouse, plants grow in the 12 or so inches of space between the two panes. Uninterrupted views of the garden, jadeite s-curved upholstery and the geometric check of the green marble floors boost the sense of verdure. A lapis lazuli side table faces an 18th-century Japanese lacquer cabinet, exemplifying the way the Villa’s materials complement, and contrast with, each other.

It feels as though Portaluppi has dressed the house with different finishes to send her off for a glittering night of opera at La Scala. Each room features sliding doors inset with mercury mirror or interlocking bricks of silver alloy. They open with a whisper and lock down like a fortress. Goatskin-parchment paneling swaths the dining room, whose plaster ceiling is spangled with constellations. Even the radiators sport bespoke brass chain-mail covers that swish like earrings.

As Marianna Kennedy, a designer whose eponymous atelier in London is renowned for lacquer, mirror and bronze work, later told me, “The wonderful detailing and restrained lines of the Portaluppi interiors are quite simple, but the finishes make it extraordinary.”

I climbed the stairs, letting my hand sweep the walnut balustrade. The sleeping quarters function as separate apartments, and while the relatively humble bedrooms feel almost spartan, the bathrooms are dazzling. Thick blush-marble slabs create towering stalls for the showers and toilets; luxuriant bathtubs anchor the rooms. “Only in Italy could bathrooms like this be made, with the availability of so much marble,” said Mr. Fincato.

I stayed until the setting sun glinted across the polished floors and distant, celebratory pops of prosecco could be heard from the garden. There would be a private party that evening, and I could almost feel the house’s soul stir back to life. Was I invited? No, but it didn’t matter. I was taking a spark of insight home with me. The magic of the place is in its heady cocktail of materials—mirror, lacquer, stone, leather, metals, glass. I vowed to avoid living the rest of my life surrounded only by old, brown wooden furniture.

As I left, waiters in dinner jackets poured coups at the bar as chic partygoers arrived. “The house feels timeless yet so of its place,” said Ms. Kennedy. “Milan looks austere and unforgiving in a way, but you go through a courtyard door, and a hidden, beautiful world unfolds.”

The idea of wallpaper elicits so much apprehension in homeowners, New York designer Francis Toumbakaris purposely uses the term “wallcovering” when speaking to clients about it. Yet decorating websites and media accounts teem with instances of the stuff. “It transforms a room and gives it personality,” said Casey Keasler, founder of design studio Casework, in Portland, Ore.

So what keeps folks from hanging the gorgeous material, and how do homeowners get over these wallpaper willies? Here, some case studies of conversions.

Hangup: It’s too pricey.

Budget concerns can hamstring homeowners. Home-services company Angi estimates that wallpaper can cost as much as $12 a square foot for labor and materials, while painting tops out at $6. “If the wall surface needs work beforehand, prices go up,” said Bethany Adams, an interior designer in Louisville, Ky. And Keasler notes that paper can cost as much as $400 a roll.

Antidote: Baby steps

New York designer Tara McCauley says homeowners can get more hang for their buck by using paper strategically. In an apartment in Brooklyn whose homeowners sweated the bottom line, she coated only the hallway with a dark-blue pattern inspired by Portuguese tiles. “It added so much impact,” McCauley said of the modest use. The designer adds that another way to save money is by hanging what she calls the gateway drug to wallpaper: patternless grass cloth. With no need to align a motif, the material goes up quickly and costs less to install, she says, “but it adds visual depth in a way plain paint never could.”

Hangup: I’ll get sick of it

A fear of commitment stops many would-be wall paperers, who worry about having a change of heart later. Erik Perez, a design publicist with his own firm in Los Angeles, campaigned hard for what he thought was the perfect old-Hollywood look for his and his husband’s dining room—a maximalist, leafy green wallpaper made famous by the mid-20th-century decoration of the Beverly Hills Hotel. His husband, Paul Hardoin, a voice-over actor, resisted. “Is it going to go out of style? Will I tire of it? Will it affect resale value?” he worried.

Erik Perez, right, and his husband, Paul Hardoin, in their Los Angeles dining room, clad in CW Stockwell’s Martinique paper. Photo: Julie Goldstone for WSJ

Antidote: Low-use spaces

Infrequently used rooms can carry a bold choice long-term. Of the Brooklyn hallway she wrapped in blue, McCauley noted, “It’s a pass-through, so you don’t get overwhelmed by a bold pattern.” Ditto powder and dining rooms, like that of Perez, who said, “We only used that room when we were entertaining and it was too cold to be outside.”

It took three years, but Hardoin caved when the banana-leaf pattern became available in blue. “I thought it looked cool,” Hardoin said. He took the leap, knowing his sister Annette Moran (a wallpaper enthusiast) would be their DIY installer. “Now it’s the happiest room in the house,” he said.

Hangup: It’s dated

When Sarah and Nate Simon bought a historic home in Louisville, Ky., the walls sported oppressively dark patterns, including big, repeating medallions set in a grid. Sarah recalls thinking, “ ‘Not this! What’s the opposite of this?’ In my mind that would be paint.” Even for folks who haven’t pulled down awful examples, “the word ‘wallpaper’ can take them back to flowery patterns of the ’50s and ’60s that feel very dated,” said Toumbakaris.

Antidote: Modernity

“Wallpaper does not mean what it used to. It can be meandering, abstract, ombre or sisal,” said Simon’s interior designer, Bethany Adams. She suggested a sophisticated Chinoiserie that New York designer Miles Redd, in a collaboration with Schumacher, updated with an aqua colorway. Adams explains that like most Chinoiseries, this pattern doesn’t repeat for more than 8 feet. “You get a peripatetic design that keeps the eye engaged,” she said. “It’s looser.” Said Simon of her dining room today, “It’s a complete transformation, like art on my walls.”

Stereotypes of fusty florals and pitiless patterns fall away when designers present homeowners with contemporary picks. Still, sometimes the conversion takes time. One of Keasler’s clients, gun-shy after removing old paper, came back a year later, ready. “We chose a clean classic style that was graphic and minimal for a modern edge in the bathroom,” said the designer.