Today’s house tour features interior designer and winner of HGTV’s Interior Design Star, Carmeon Hamilton. Carmeon is a Memphis based designer who fell in love with this contemporary house for its beautiful trims and its galley kitchen. While most people will run away from that feature in a home, Carmeon saw this as an excuse to flex her design style, which she’s best described as modern bohemian, as well as her DIY skills. Her love of plants add bohemian touches to her classic modern style. You can also see afrocentric elements that are true to her heritage, sprinkled around the home.
Category
✨
PeopleTranscript
00:00 Hi, my name is Carmion Hamilton.
00:01 I'm an interior designer, and welcome to my home.
00:04 [upbeat music]
00:07 I get asked the question often,
00:18 what is my own personal style?
00:19 And I would describe it as modern bohemian.
00:22 You'll see all of the furniture has very clean lines.
00:25 It's layered with tons of texture,
00:27 and of course, lots of plants.
00:28 That's where the bohemian element comes in.
00:30 So we're currently sitting in my living room,
00:32 but you can also see a little bit of the office.
00:35 The entryway, which is right behind me,
00:37 is the first thing you see when you walk in.
00:39 And so it is all personality.
00:42 You are hit with a hand-painted mural by Moff,
00:46 and it moves into our hallway,
00:48 which has a Serengeti wallpaper
00:51 reminiscent of African terrain.
00:54 I knew exactly where I wanted to put this wallpaper
00:58 when I found it through Hooga and West.
01:00 Made the perfect background for some artwork
01:03 that I absolutely love.
01:05 This is G. Horton, another artist that I am a huge fan of.
01:09 He turns Black American culture
01:13 and incorporates African culture.
01:17 These boys are very reminiscent of my own son,
01:22 and so having their faces reflected in our home,
01:26 I make sure that my son can see himself.
01:28 So now, come with me to my kitchen.
01:30 [upbeat music]
01:33 So we're standing in my very small,
01:41 but mighty galley kitchen.
01:44 Most people go into a home
01:46 and they would see a kitchen this small
01:47 and wanna blow out the walls and make it bigger and open,
01:50 and I'm not a fan of that.
01:53 Number one, I don't want to see my dirty dishes
01:56 from my living room and from everywhere else in the house.
01:58 I love that it is all contained right here,
02:01 and I love that I can move from my sink to my stove
02:04 to my refrigerator in no time.
02:07 Since it was a small kitchen,
02:08 I wanted to ground the floor with the black cabinets
02:12 and raise the ceiling with the white uppers.
02:15 The tile for the backsplash came from fireclay,
02:18 and this particular tile was created
02:21 to look like the lengths of a watch.
02:24 However, if you look at it, it's the letter H,
02:27 which is the beginning of my last name, Hamilton.
02:31 So I thought it was perfect to include
02:34 in the hub of our home in the kitchen.
02:37 That's pretty much the only updates we've done here.
02:39 [upbeat music]
02:42 So we're sitting in our dining room.
02:51 I wanted to make sure this space felt very special.
02:56 One of the first furniture pieces that we bought
02:59 for our home was this dining table.
03:01 I am a mid-century furniture lover to my core,
03:05 and I knew I wanted something sculptural
03:07 that would be beautiful no matter
03:09 if it had chairs around it or not.
03:10 My proudest DIY is this hand-painted mural
03:15 in our dining room.
03:17 My favorite number is three.
03:18 It represents my family and several other things.
03:21 And so I took the three hash marks
03:24 and created this almost mud cloth looking texture
03:28 on the wall, and it blew people away on the internet
03:31 so much so that it's now turned into wallpaper.
03:33 So you can buy that.
03:35 [upbeat music]
03:37 So we are currently standing in my office.
03:43 This is where the hub of two businesses is.
03:49 Our desks, two long desks, they have integrated plugs.
03:53 So we have our laptops, we charge our phones.
03:55 Everything happens here.
03:57 And the desk is standing height, it's bar height.
04:00 So our bar stools, I wanted something very comfortable.
04:03 They're leather, they're black, they're very chic, gold,
04:08 very reminiscent of the modern bohemian feel
04:11 that's happening throughout the whole space.
04:13 One of my prized possessions, this artist is Lauren Pierce.
04:18 She's based in Detroit.
04:20 I just so happened to get one of her pieces
04:23 before she blew up.
04:24 She has pieces in Swiss Beats House,
04:27 Swiss Beats and Alicia Keys Home.
04:29 And yeah, you can't get her stuff anymore
04:31 unless you're a bajillionaire.
04:33 But if you can get a Lauren Pierce piece,
04:36 get a Lauren Pierce piece.
04:38 So on this side of the room, I devoted one side
04:42 to my plants and things I love to look at.
04:45 This is where a lot of the work happens.
04:48 When I'm working on projects,
04:50 I like to put all of the finishes and materials up here
04:54 and see how things work together.
04:57 I've mixed in personal artwork
05:00 with things that I am working with
05:02 just to give my workspace some interest.
05:07 Never without plants, ever.
05:09 [upbeat music]
05:11 [upbeat music]
05:14 [upbeat music]
05:16 [upbeat music]
05:19 [upbeat music]
05:21 The room I'm most proud of
05:22 is definitely the living room office area.
05:26 Since this space was so wide open,
05:29 I wanted to break things up using different textures
05:32 and also color blocking on the walls.
05:34 The living room side of this room, which is one long room,
05:38 I've painted black to represent the lounge area of the room.
05:43 And the office side of the room is painted white
05:46 because that's where we work.
05:47 We wanna be energized.
05:48 It's very important to me that people are comfortable
05:51 when they come into my home.
05:52 And so layers of texture are part of making sure
05:56 this space looks like I want you to come in and sit down.
05:59 So every single thing that's here,
06:01 from the rug to the sofa to the chairs,
06:04 they're all hardworking fabrics
06:06 that people don't have to worry about messing up
06:08 when they're here because I don't want people
06:10 thinking about ruining things.
06:12 I just want them to be comfortable
06:14 and feel like they're at home themselves.
06:16 Once I knew how we wanted to use that space,
06:20 designing it and picking out all the furniture
06:24 and the finishes, the paint colors, and the artwork
06:27 was just a joy.
06:28 It turned out exactly the way I wanted it to.
06:31 [upbeat music]
06:34 [upbeat music]
06:37 My son is 14 years old and we completed his room
06:46 about two years ago.
06:48 A lot of people ask me about designing for kids
06:51 and I say, "Listen to your kids."
06:55 My son wanted a Sonic the Hedgehog blue and red room.
07:00 So a tone on tone, very monochromatic space
07:04 is what we created.
07:05 We went with a blue headboard and a blue chair.
07:08 His desk chair is blue, blue bedding.
07:11 So the eye gets to rest when you're in this space,
07:14 but it's still fun because it's his favorite color.
07:17 A lot of the things in here are very sentimental to my son.
07:22 So my husband passed away a little over a year ago
07:26 and his best friends got together
07:28 and framed a football jersey.
07:30 A lot of them play football and had my husband's number
07:34 put on it and had this frame for my son.
07:36 This piece of art is something my son did back in,
07:40 I think he was in second grade
07:42 and it's a picture of him and my husband.
07:45 So I put it in a shadow box and framed it,
07:48 made sure it was hanging in his space as well.
07:51 One of the last things that my husband did
07:53 before he passed away was he found this art piece
07:57 of Muhammad Ali in his grandmother's home
08:01 and he had it reframed and I was able to pick it up.
08:04 I didn't know he was framing it in a red frame,
08:06 but it was perfect for my son's room.
08:09 I love this space.
08:10 It is so vastly different from the rest of our home.
08:13 You can still tell that it has a designer's touch
08:16 because everything is so cohesive,
08:18 but you also know this room belongs to a teenager
08:21 because that's what it should look like.
08:23 (upbeat music)
08:26 So this space is our main bedroom
08:38 and bedrooms are function first.
08:41 You put a bed in it and you go to sleep, essentially.
08:44 So you have to get really creative
08:48 around making a bedroom interesting
08:50 and you do that through textures and varying surfaces.
08:53 So we have a pattern on the bed and then all of the layers.
08:57 I love a very layered bed and I'm also a fan of linen.
09:02 So everything on the bed is linen.
09:04 So lots of softness, but there's a leather chair in here too
09:07 to give an element of something that's more modern
09:10 in this very bohemian space.
09:13 Lots of wood, varying wood textures to warm up the space.
09:17 So when I was designing our bedroom,
09:20 I knew I wanted some visual texture on the walls.
09:24 I loved the idea of slatted walls,
09:27 but I wanted to put my own spin on it.
09:30 Most of the time you see them go floor to ceiling
09:32 or there's some type of wainscoting,
09:35 especially if you have a low profile bed like this,
09:38 you may see them pop up just a little bit above the bed.
09:41 But for me, I wanted to treat it like a piece of art.
09:44 It's the most interesting thing,
09:46 but it's also the quietest thing in the room.
09:48 I'm Carmion Hamilton,
09:57 and you're watching Home & Texture House Tours.
10:00 (upbeat music)
10:02 [MUSIC PLAYING]