How to Make a Florida Home Feel Curated, Not Coastal-Themed

I'm a pretty fortunate person.  I get to see some really beautiful homes.  Some homes have a lot of potential.  And some homes are on their way to being pretty great.  If I'm really lucky, I get to be part of the journey.  Florida does not have a shortage of really amazing homes.  However, so many Florida homes I walk into for the first time seem like their design destiny has been decided for them. Rope-wrapped mirrors. A palette of driftwood and sea glass. Something in shiplap. I say this not with judgement, but with experience.  I remember when I was a kid, my parents dreamed of having a place on Marco Island on the west coast of Florida.  When they finally had a place, it was decked out in the usual sea motifs - light blues, lots of shells, and some wicker furniture.  It was the late '80s, so I'm not blaming anyone. Just...making an observation.  

However, today, so many years after my childhood, coastal homes still seem to carry that design stereotype.  Call it "Coastal 3.0".  The result is a room that photographs like a hundred other rooms from Naples to Newport Beach.  Spoiler alert - I don't design that way, and after so many years of working along Florida's east and west coasts, I've come to believe it's the single biggest mistake homeowners make when they set out to "do coastal."

A curated home and a coastal-themed home are not the same species. One is assembled around a mood board. The other is built, piece by piece, decision by decision, around the people who actually live there. This is the difference I spend every project chasing, and it's the difference I want to walk you through here.

How do you make a Florida home feel curated rather than coastal-themed? I start with the people who live there—not the fact that the house happens to be near the water. Architecture and location should inform an interior, but they shouldn't dictate its personality. I build a distinct color story, layer pattern and texture, mix vintage and custom pieces, incorporate meaningful objects, and edit until the home feels collected rather than decorated.

This is where my point of view gets a little stronger (so hear me out). "Coastal" isn't a design philosophy.  For me, at best, it's a color palette. Rope. Weathered wood. A blue-and-white striped something. It tells you a house is near water. It tells you nothing about the people who live in it, what they collect, what they've inherited, where they've traveled, or what makes them feel like themselves when they walk through the front door.

A lot of the homes I design in Florida happen to sit near the water — that's simply geography. But I have never once let proximity to the Atlantic or the Gulf dictate the interior. A house doesn't need to look like the beach just because it can see one. It needs to look like the family who lives in it. 

In fact, if you really want to see something completely different for a coastal home, check out my Marina del Rey project.  A Hollywood producer reached out after she'd purchased her townhouse steps from the sand and said: "I don't want to do any of the coastal stuff.  Let's go bold, maximalist, and have fun!"  

The clearest way I can explain the difference is to show it in practice, because I've built entire projects around proving this exact point.

Coquina Sands, Naples: Redefining What a Gulf Coast Home Can Be

In Naples' Coquina Sands, I inherited a home sitting in one of Naples, FL's chicest coastal enclaves.  For this project, the client was not interested at all in doing the typical "Naples Coastal" design.  She wanted something more layered, provocative.  For the den, we went with a wine-toned color-drenching that gives the house an evening mood entirely its own. Vintage finds — a mid-century credenza, collected ceramics, flea-market pieces elevated to gallery status — sit alongside sculptural lighting.

None of that is "beach house" in the expected sense.

Audubon, Manalapan: Curation Built Over Five Years, Not Five Weekends

The Audubon Residence in Manalapan — once home to artist Orville Bulman — is the clearest proof I have that a collected home is a product of time, not a shopping trip. I worked on this Spanish Mediterranean estate with the same clients for five years. Contemporary art sits under trellised ceilings. Tropical "palm beach" elements are used sparingly to give a sense of place, but not to define it.  

I really do feel that the house doesn't read as "Florida coastal." It reads as a home that has been lived in, edited, and loved for far longer than it actually has — which is exactly the sensation a collected interior should produce.

I want to be clear that this isn't a regional trick I reserve for the Gold Coast. It's how I approach every project, wherever the water happens to be. As I mentioned above, in Los Angeles' beachside town of Marina del Rey, I designed a multi-level townhouse for an entertainment industry producer who could just as easily have been sold the safe harbor of a neutral, "coastal chic" palette. Instead, that house got a hanging swing in the dining room, a romantic canopied bed in a tropically clad primary bedroom, and a deconstructed sectional that refuses to sit predictably against a wall. Together, she and I collaborated to layer color and pattern, becoming a tour de force specifically because they challenged what a beach residence was expected to look like.

Naples, Manalapan, Coconut Grove, Marina del Rey — different coastlines, different clients, same conviction. Proximity to water is never a design brief. It's simply where the house happens to sit.

This is what I mean when I talk about fearless curation on my design philosophy page: it's never about what goes where and with what. It's about the story that unfolds as individual pieces — each with its own history — come together to create a better whole. Curation is the discipline. Collaboration with the client is what gives that curation a soul.

Clients often ask me how a house ends up feeling gathered rather than staged. It isn't instinct alone — it's a structured process I return to on every project, in Florida or anywhere else. Here is how it breaks down.

1. Start with the people, not the zip code. Before I look at a single fabric swatch, I want to understand how a family actually lives.  The house's location informs architecture. It should never dictate the personality.
2. Build a real color story.  A color story can include a chartreuse breakfast nook or a wine-dark lounge. It rarely includes "greige."
3. Layer pattern with intention; be bold. Layering pattern is a skill, and it's the fastest way to make a room feel like it was gathered rather than ordered from a single showroom floor.
4. Curate fearlessly, then edit relentlessly. Every vintage find, every custom piece, every inherited object earns its place through beauty or story — never through habit.
5. Protect the vision through construction. A collected home isn't only about furniture and fabric. It's tile layout, millwork profiles, grout color, ceiling treatments.
6. Give it time. The Audubon Residence took time. A house doesn't need to be lived in for a decade to feel like it has been — but it does need a designer willing to keep refining until every layer earns its place.

A curated interior isn't simply one containing expensive or unusual objects. It's one in which furnishings, art, textiles, architectural details and personal pieces have been deliberately selected and edited so the home reflects the people who live there rather than a prescribed style.

A curated home really can't be assembled from a single vendor's catalog. It requires a full-service interior design approach — one point of view, carried through every decision.

In practice, that means my studio is involved in:

• Finish and material selection — custom window treatments, upholstery, wallpaper, decorative lighting, and paint colors
• Architectural collaboration — custom cabinetry, millwork profiles, tile layout and grout color, built-ins, and ceiling treatments
• Construction coordination — working directly with builders, architects, engineers, and contractors
• Sourcing across eras and continents — vintage markets, custom furniture makers, artisan textile studios, and emerging local artists

This is the only way a house ends up feeling gathered instead of decorated.

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living room:  juan pablo castro