Happy Hues Bring the Flair in Winter Park Home

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Husband-and-wife developers and interior designers Zane and Emily Williams of Z Properties Group offer full design-build services to their clients. But even they were a little surprised when a prospective buyer fell in love with their own eclectic home and offered to buy it complete with all the furnishings—from the twin chartreuse sofas to the color-saturated art to the pink and white plaid chairs. 

A modern design with touches of traditional, the home replaced an older knockdown in an established Winter Park neighborhood. Its simple, clean exterior is anything but severe, thanks to a combination of flat and arched rooflines and a white-painted brick exterior, says architect Gary Hancock, founder of Winter Park Design. “This house has some classical design in its proportions and its symmetry,” he says. These time-honored elements give the house an established look—as though it has always been in the neighborhood—an important consideration for both Hancock and Zane.

But there’s yet another facet of the home’s exterior personality: colorful floral awnings and bright-pink gates announce the home’s playful side, hinting at more to come once visitors walk through the courtyard and enter the matching pink front door.

Inside, the foyer stretches upward with its double-height ceilings, clad in deep pink textured wallpaper that glows with the sheen of lacquer. “Pink is absolutely my favorite color and I’m not shy about it,” says Emily. The Venetian plaster walls in the remainder of the living spaces “are kind of glowy and glossy,” she adds. “They give off a beautiful luminescence.”

Emily says she always begins her design vision with color, working off one element that inspires her. “In the living room, it was the green and lavender rug. In the foyer, it was the pink wallpaper,” she says. “I look at one thing that speaks to me and build around it.”

Taken piece by piece, the interior design could be a difficult sell to a client, and Emily is the first to acknowledge that it makes more sense when viewed as a whole. “Because I was decorating our own home, it was easier,” she says. “You can’t really tell a client that you want to paint the bookshelves bright green and put navy, pink, and white tiles on the floor. It’s hard for them to imagine how it will look.” 

Laid out in a U-shape, the home is 3,400 square feet, including guest quarters space above the garage accessed from a separate, outside staircase. “We’re a small family; we have one child and really only needed two bedrooms and two and a half baths,” Emily notes. Still, they added the separate apartment with a
bedroom/sitting area, a bath, and a kitchenette to accommodate overnight guests. 

The new owners first approached Z Properties Group about building a much larger home. But they soon realized that—with their three children nearly out of the house—they might as well downsize a year earlier than planned.

“After they moved in, they didn’t change one single thing in the house,” Emily says—a testament to her design sensibility and stunning use of color. “Nothing is off-limits,” she adds, when describing her fearless style. “And I love the unexpectedness of color.”

Story Credits: 

Interior Design by Emily Dowling Williams, Z Properties Group, Inc., Winter Park, FL

Architecture by Zane Williams, Z Properties Group, Inc., Winter Park, FL 

Exterior architecture by Robert Hancock, Winter Park Design, Inc., Maitland, FL

Landscape Architecture by Andrew Swanson, Signature Landscape Contractors, Winter Park, FL 

Text by Judy Martel

Photography by Stephen Allen, Winter Park, FL 

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