Inside a Collected and Curated Family Home on the Manatee River

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It’s entirely possible for a home to be both a showpiece and a scrapbook. For proof, look no further than a Bradenton family house fronting the Manatee River designed by Angela Rodriguez and the team at her interior design studio, which has offices in Sarasota and Naples.

“The owners wanted it to be stylish and aesthetically beautiful,” says the designer. “But they also wanted to make sure that it reflected the character and the energy of their family.”

Translation: elevated interiors that can live a little bit. It helped that these particular clients are globetrotters, with beloved far-flung locales that informed their new home’s palette and textures. “Some of their favorite travels have been trips to South Africa and Hawaii,” says Rodriguez. “Those sojourns inspired rooms that read like they’re part of a resort.”

Take the primary bath, where the adjacent outdoor shower has a rough-cut stone veneer “to give it a tropical vacation feel” and the cabinetry’s walnut finish mirrors like the ones found in island resorts.

That delicate balance of wow-factor and warmth is common throughout the home. Over the seating area in the living room, an oversized sculptural woven pendant brings a sense of intimacy under soaring ceilings. In the kitchen, the custom cast concrete hood becomes an aesthetic punctuation mark, adding an aura of the rugged amid stained white oak and painted cabinetry. Just beyond, folding windows completely open to the outside, a design move that can transform entertaining into a free-range experience to epitomize indoor/outdoor living.

The homeowners’ travel influences also appear subtly in woven grasscloths and collected objects, and thanks to these curated finds, nothing feels like a design showroom. “More than half of the items we used in the styling of shelves and tabletops are things that they already owned and that meant something to them,” notes Rodriguez. “It wasn’t just filler that we went out and purchased to make the home look pretty.”

Upstairs, the primary bedroom is pure tactile reverie. “This was definitely inspired by some of those vacation and travel memories, and we were able to bring a bit of that home to wake up and start each day,” says Rodriguez. A headboard wall wrapped in handcrafted water hyacinth sets the stage, while grasscloth cloaks the other walls in quiet texture. Even the tray ceiling, clad in wood meant to harmonize with the bath, adds to the atmosphere of island escapism.

Ultimately, the home is a vessel for memories—ones already made as well as others to come. “Everything in this house was designed after taking into account how the family was going to use it every day,” says Rodriguez. “This is a home for living.”

Story Credits:

Interior Design by Angela Rodriguez, Angela Rodriguez Interiors, Sarasota, FL

Architecture by Hausdesign Studio, Bradenton, FL

Construction by Bruce Williams Home, Bradenton, FL

Text by Kathryn O’shea-Evans

Photography by Ryan Gamma, Sarasota, FL

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