Sanibel Island Home Exudes Coastal Character

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After Hurricane Ian swept through Sanibel Island in 2022, a couple from Missouri whose long-time vacation home was destroyed by the storm hired Denise Fogarty to oversee the design as they rebuilt the four-bedroom, four-and-a-half-bath house. Fogarty knew the couple from St. Louis—her eponymous firm has offices there as well as in Naples—and, most importantly, the couple trusted the designer to keep the essence of the original house while updating its look.

“Even though the residence was built over 30 years ago, it had a really workable floor plan,” says Fogarty. “I offered a few tweaks, like moving the laundry room and turning that space into a pantry.” Fogarty also reworked the entry and suggested moving a few windows and sliders to create better circulation patterns and more symmetrical layouts.

As Fogarty and the wife talked through the decor, the designer suggested new schemes to update the guest bedrooms. “The family has always known these as the coral room, the purple room, and the pink room due to the color of their walls,” says Fogarty. “We decided to keep the names, but not drench the rooms in those colors as they’d once been. Instead, we chose colorful headboards and repeated the color in the fabric.”

One place where Fogarty wholeheartedly endorsed color saturation was in the small den. “If it’s just the two of you in a great big house, you need a cozy spot to have a glass of wine or watch TV,” she says. “The wife is always up for some fun, so I said, ‘How about some pink grass-cloth in here?’” With the den ensconced in color and texture, Fogarty repeated the dusty pink shade in the great room’s club chairs, which sit just outside the den.

For the kitchen, the homeowner came to Fogarty with photos and ideas, and the designer helped her figure out the layout changes and materials to achieve that vision. “We did all new windows above the sink,” she says. “And we made the island longer with a dropdown table at the end for dining.” Early on, the duo found a Schumacher fabric with whimsically embroidered sea creatures and decided it would be perfect for the valances. Picking up on the blue in the fabric, Fogarty choose navy for the blue lacquered counter stools and a beaded chandelier.

For the primary bedroom, which wasn’t pre-designated with a color theme, Fogarty and the wife again found a fabric they loved—this time by Brunschwig & Fils—and liberally used it for both the headboard and drapes. “We still needed a few fabrics, so we went to the International Design Source in Naples,” says Fogarty. “We found that main fabric, plus the animal print for the chair and the fabric we still needed for the pink bedroom.”

Fogarty credits the friendship she and the couple developed for success of the project. “The wife has great taste, and she’s really taught herself a lot about design,” she says. “Her goal was to make the house classy, not Crayola-ish, and we succeeded.”

Story Credits:

Interior Design by Denise Fogarty, Denise Fogarty Interiors, Naples, FL

Construction by Wolter Group, Fort Myers, FL

Text by Laura Hine

Photography by Sean Murphy, SPM Photography, Jacksonville, FL

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