Take an Interior Design Tour of This Toronto Mansion
We're in Project Doncliffe right now, a crossover between my two companies, my interior design firm, Miriam Manzo Interiors, and my staging company, The Staging Group. This is a gorgeous mansion. Come with me as I take you on a mansion tour to get ideas you can use in your home.
Center hall
This is a home that we renovated and then staged for sale. I want to show you some of my favorite parts. We're in the center hall right now. What I've done here is I've brought in a French antique center hall table and then brought in some contemporary accessories to modernize the space.
Home office
We're in the home office. I find one of the biggest mistakes people make is overcrowding a space. So you can see here my shelves are purposely kept very light. The furniture is light and doesn't overwhelm the space. This is especially important when you're staging for sale. You want people to see the architecture, especially in this home, of the space without getting lost in all the stuff.
Marble counters
I'm a huge fan of marble counters. In this house, these counters are 20 years old, and you can see nothing wrong with marble.
Also, anybody who follows me will know that appliances never make it onto my counters. I prefer to keep it about beautiful things, and then the functional things are hidden behind doors.
Family room
So a lot of people love the idea of having a family room that's open to the kitchen. Then, the biggest mistake they make is that they have you walking into the back of a couch. I prefer to have couches facing each other or a TV, but in this case, that wouldn't work, and then to have chairs flanking the fireplace as a spot to sit and have a glass of wine at the end of the day or a one-on-one intimate conversation. It keeps the room more open and doesn't defeat the purpose of having this joint space.
Styling a coffee table
One of the biggest questions I get asked is how to style a coffee table. My suggestion is to keep it simple. Books are your best friend, so look for accessories that are unique and speak to you. If you're having a hard time finding them, you can always check our new shop page, mycuratedinterior.com, where I am curating a collection of vintage pieces, one of a kind, and interesting pieces of accessories to really elevate your coffee table styling.
Principal bedroom
We're in the principal bedroom. One of the main things I like to say to people is that when you have beautiful architecture, there's very little you have to do to enhance a room. And this room had beautiful architecture. We basically left it the way it was, with the exception of taking away some of the big and heavy furniture, even though it was a large room, and I replaced the chandelier. Chandeliers, lighting in general, are one of the most important changes you can make to elevate a space. What they had, while beautiful, was much too small and too traditional for the room.
We kept the bedding simple, and we brought in this beautiful chess table so we make the room so that people feel like it's a room that can be lived in rather than a room that is just used for sleeping, and I think we've accomplished that here.
One of the things I want to point out in this room is a great way to show this. The bed is extremely traditional, but you can see I've brought in some extremely contemporary nightstands and lamps and mixed them with the traditional ones.
You can see that again here in this little vanity area I've created.
An uber traditional French style painted cane back chair mixed with a contemporary console table, and then this truly contemporary round mirror and the whole thing flows beautifully. So, it's a great trick to update traditional furniture. Don't be afraid to mix styles.
Main bath
The main bath here at Project Doncliffe, besides being incredibly outdated, had a weird configuration. There was a bathtub with a shower built into it, and then the toilet was on this wall, and all this space was really being wasted. So, we converted the bathtub into a stand-alone shower and then brought in this beautiful freestanding tub. We put marble on the floors and the shower floor to save some money. We filled in with a brick lay subway tile, which is a great trick to get you that luxe look while keeping the cost down.
And then I want to point out this fantastic vanity from Vanity Scents—a great way to get a beautiful piece.
Guest bedroom
We're in the guest bedroom. There are a few things that really elevate this room. Traditionally, when I'm doing a house for sale, I like the walls to be a very neutral, almost white palette. In this room, I've decided to go dark so that the furniture can really pop. That's one way to make your room feel luxurious.
There are also a couple of elements that I would like to bring into a room to elevate it from the everyday. One of them is a cowhide. Love them in a space, traditional, contemporary, it doesn't matter. Also, these Mongolian fur stools that we make in any room can handle them, and they make a room pop.
Bedding
The bedding, again, we've kept simple, and I'm always on the lookout to create custom pillows that are different, luxurious fabrics, always down-filled. There's just nothing that compares to a down-filled pillow. And then everything else is kept very simple.
I hope you enjoyed today's mansion tour. Which room was your favorite? Let me know in the comments below.
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