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In Feel Free Home, Leanne Ford shares the marble-pairing approach she uses to make kitchens feel layered, soulful, and personal.
Key Points
- In her new book Feel Free Home, Leanne Ford shares a budget-friendly trick: Use one dramatic marble slab as a focal point and pair it with simpler stone elsewhere for a custom designer look.
- Ford says kitchens feel richer and more inviting when layered with natural textures, vintage pieces, and imperfect materials.
- Her favorite way to save money is mixing affordable basics with standout finds, like stone remnants, vintage seating, or statement lighting.
Leanne Ford is comfortable breaking the rules. As a designer known for her maximalism-meets-minimalism aesthetic, where vintage finds are a must and white paint is a given, Ford is used to commentary that often says, “Hm, I didn’t know you could do that.” So when it came to writing her new book, Feel Free Home, she hoped to teach people how to design outside of expectations.
“Honestly, I wanted this book to feel less like a ‘design book’ and more like a permission slip,” Ford says. “Something you leave out on your table and come back to when you need a little courage to trust yourself.”
Ford says that good design isn’t overly complicated, and she’s able to pull off stunning transformations by sticking to a simple formula. “Throughout the book, I break everything down into the five elements I return to in every space I design: texture, nature, vintage, art, and personality,” she continues. “If you have those five things in a room, it starts to feel layered and soulful, almost automatically.”
This ethos may seem easier to follow outside the realm of a kitchen, where rules can appear stricter and layers might be harder to come by. Nevertheless, Ford has a solution: Zero in on your slabs. In Feel Free Home, Ford suggests using one dramatic marble slab as a waterfall feature and pairing that with a more budget-friendly marble for the rest of the countertops.
“If you’re going to splurge on one dramatic slab, I say really let her sing,” she says. “I love using the ‘hero’ stone where the eye naturally lands first: when you walk into a kitchen.” Here’s how this simple countertop trick can give you a designer-level finish, just by ever-so-slightly breaking the rules.
Pick the Right Marble Slabs
When choosing the “hero” slab for this kitchen feature, Ford tends to gravitate toward Calacatta marble. It should have strong veining and imperfections, in keeping with her design elements of texture and personality. “I’m usually much more drawn to stones that feel earthy and organic versus something overly polished or sterile. I want it to feel like nature made it, because it did,” she says. “That’s also why I always get my marble honed, never polished. Always.” While it might feel like your choice is too daring, don’t worry. The drama of this piece is the point, and will feel balanced beside a calmer secondary marble.
“For the secondary marble or stone, I like going quieter and more tonal; maybe something with softer movement or less contrast,” Ford continues. “The goal is for it to support the hero slab, not fight with it.” This strategic pairing will allow you to get a more expensive marble as the hero piece, while saving cash on the larger footprint of the surrounding countertops. “It’s one of my favorite high-low design tricks because you still get that luxurious custom feel,” Ford says.
Where to Find the Perfect Slabs
If you know anything about Ford, then you’re well aware that she loves a good treasure hunt. That’s why she recommends sifting through your local stone yard for your mix-and-match countertops. You’ll want to become friends with the owners so that they can assist with finding contenders, and Ford says that they’ll usually have winners tucked away.
“Ask if you can dig through their scrap pile—or as I like to call it, ‘the marble graveyard,'” Ford adds. “When stone yards cut slabs down for custom projects, there are always remnants left behind.”
You should still pay attention to structural issues like large cracks, since that might pose problems during installation. Also make sure you’re getting real stone, and don’t worry too much about wear. “Marble is meant to age and evolve over time,” Ford says. “In my case, I’ll typically pay extra for that!” If you fall in love with a piece, that’s often Ford’s clue that it’s worth holding on to. “If a piece immediately makes you feel something, it’s probably a good one. The best materials usually have a little soul to them,” she says.
Bring More Nature In
Ford is full of high-low insights beyond this double-slab trick. She recommends finding hardware on eBay, and saving money on cabinetry by almost always being team “no-uppers” (it makes a kitchen feel more lived in). She’d pair a low-cost porcelain sconce from Home Depot with an oversized decorative globe bulb instead of recessed lighting, and she’d also look to the past for made-to-last seating, too. But if there’s one overarching theme she’d advise while designing a cozy kitchen, it’s not unlike her slab idea. Ford recommends bringing in nature, in more ways than one.
“Kitchens can get cold and sterile really quickly with all the hard surfaces and appliances, so I’m always trying to bring natural materials back in to warm things up,” she notes. “That can be with real honed marble, terracotta, wood, linen, handmade ceramics, branches clipped from outside, or even a bowl of fruit on the counter. That idea is a huge part of why I created my TERRA FIRMA tabletop collection, too. I wanted everyday pieces that felt grounded and imperfect in the best way.” When it comes to kitchen design, a little imperfection goes a long way.
Read the original article on Real Simple
