Classic meets modern in Gil Melott’s bespoke interiors, from downtown lofts in Chicago to summer homes in the Hamptons. Working across the country, his projects are connected by a warmth that’s achieved through careful editing and a well-appointed balance of disparate textures and periods. Custom millwork, furnishings, and lighting live alongside vintage pieces. Read on to peek inside some recent projects and shop his Chairish favorites.
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What made you passionate about interior design? How’d you get your start?
The easy answer would be to say I have always been creative and learned early on that environment is a catalyst for all experience. It just took me three prior careers and a massive heart attack to finally start my design firm. It was a life-changing event that has propelled me to the most productive, inspired, and satisfying work I could have hoped for. My passion now is as much in the process. I love the results two years later, when I visit a client living in a space.
Shop Gil Melott's Chairish Favorites
What do you find most compelling about Chairish?
Chairish has remained true to the value statement to provide access to well-curated vintage items with a distinct eye on diverse aesthetics, authenticity, and sustainability.
How does sustainability factor into your design choices and love of vintage?
Our designs are a mixture of vintage and consciously produced contemporary pieces. Now more than ever, beyond style and provenance, our clients respond to the idea of reinvigorating vintage pieces and offering them as future heirlooms.
Favorite way of making a statement-making moment in a room?
Designs are driven by integrating the client’s aspirations and my own experiences. Sometimes a statement is a simple as giant vase of branches on a dining table. Nothing else. Other times, it’s five-hundred ceramic pots lined on bookshelves, versus books that feel staged.
Shop Gil Melott's Chairish Favorites
Do you have any go-to color palettes and color combos?
I am inspired by nature generally and often find my color combinations derived from what’s outside the window; but I can just as easily be inspired by a client’s wardrobe. I love a milk chocolate brown, olive green and cloudy blue, just as much as I respond to ninety-percent caramel with a touch of candy-apple red.
What advice do you have for first-time clients to make their space truly personal?
Turn off the internet and start making a list of how you want to live in your home. We can be easily inundated with trends and overwhelmed by choices we didn’t need to make. Your needs come first, the ideas and inspiration are supporting mechanisms. I also tell me clients, whether they are in New York, Chicago, or Dallas that every home, space, city, and family has a singular voice, so we work to find that—not someone else’s interpretation of it.
Lead Image: Interior Design by Gil Melott, Photography by Ryan McDonald.