This Home & Texture House Tour spotlights the home of Memphis, Tennessee-based interior designer David Quarles IV. As a result of his career in jewelry design, interior decorating, visual merchandising, and fitness — David says he views creativity not simply as an activity, but a way of life. This talented expert’s mid-century style home is a cultural cornucopia which embodies that philosophy. David’s Afro-Caribbean, Black American, European and Indigenous-American roots are infused throughout his spaces. He draws inspiration from textures, patterns, the colors, and other artisanal goods commonly produced in the countries from where his heritage originates. David is also an artist through and through which is apparent with vibrant oil paintings and drawings decorating the walls of his home.
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00:00 Hey Home & Texture, my name is David Quarles. I'm a designer in Memphis, Tennessee and welcome to my home.
00:04 I like to think of the theme, the overall theme of my home as a French, Spanish and Italianate home,
00:26 but a mid-century modern home at that. So I can never really decide where I want to live and I
00:30 love visiting different places and so instead of trying to find just one place to live, I brought
00:36 all of my favorite places to my home. I like to curate everything from a sense of happy and so
00:41 with a lot of light and then letting more light in, as you'll probably see a little bit later,
00:45 I just want to really embrace sunlight and what I feel inside and have it like come out tenfold
00:53 in my home. So yeah, this room and especially in this neighborhood, I mean you kind of automatically
01:00 walk into the living room. So let me back up and this will be a big theme in all of my design.
01:05 I'm a synesthete and I experience chromesthesia and so I actually respond to the sound of music
01:13 through color and so anytime that I'll hear a specific song, it's kind of like you throw me
01:18 into a kaleidoscope and I see all of the different colors and then I pick out which room, which is
01:24 the color that I want to stay in and then I kind of go with that. So the inspiration behind this
01:28 room is Diana Ross's "It's My House." It's just like when you wake up, it's very cheerful and so
01:35 yellow automatically. That's my favorite color by the way. If you look down in the rug, you have
01:39 like little spots of yellow and I love geometric shapes as well. If you look, there are some
01:43 pillows that have it and so I like to mix textures as well because in songs, I hear textures. One
01:50 thing that does go into the influence of my home as well is my culture, my background. So my dad's
01:57 family is Dominican, Creole, Liberian, and Jewish and my mom's side of the family is Indigenous
02:04 American, white, and black and so I feel that everything that I kind of collect over time and
02:12 through travels, through family heirlooms, and just the colors and textures that come from all
02:17 of those different cultures is what has poured into my home. So if there's any one thing that
02:22 would be like a business card or a representation of who I am, it's my home.
02:41 I know a lot of people say that the kitchen is the heart of the home. For me, the dining space is
02:46 because it's where you break bread. It's where you have relationships formed. We all have not
02:52 seen some of our friends for a very long time and so it's where you kind of rekindle those
02:57 relationships and you strengthen your friendships and what better way to do it through good food,
03:02 good conversation, good drinks, and so that's why I poured probably the most love into this space.
03:09 There is a very special wall behind me and it is a wallpaper that I ended up painting by hand.
03:17 It did not take as long as one may think but I love it so much and then I also have a painting
03:22 that is representative of one thing that I really love doing and I think a lot of people see that I
03:27 do this all the time is dancing. So I got it from one of our last visits to the Dominican Republic
03:31 and I like made the frame that goes around it. I want it to feel intimate. I want it to feel cozy
03:36 but I also want it to feel like there's an elevated experience like you're about to get a good meal
03:40 and if I'm cooking it probably is.
03:42 It's my first time doing such a moody interior because you see that everything in my house is
04:00 very bright and cheery but this used to be all white and when I want to go to sleep I want to
04:05 go to sleep and the white walls used to wake me up and so now I can kind of ease up the colors
04:10 that are here. It's just like get up a little bit and so with the wallpaper and how it plays with
04:16 the rug and like the textures in the rug and how it's just a little jungle it feels like a bedroom
04:22 that I've designed in the middle of I don't know Fiji and so it's kind of like bringing a treehouse
04:30 in the tropics and making it my bedroom and I wanted to have a big emphasis on the green,
04:35 big emphasis on the black and I ended up because of the texture of the ceiling it is popcorn and
04:42 I was not going to spend the money at that time to scrape it all off and so I decided to make it
04:47 disappear and when I was first going over the concept and people were like it's going to make
04:51 your room feel small but sometimes most times I'll say when you paint a ceiling black it doesn't make
04:58 the room feel smaller it actually makes the ceiling feel infinite and so especially at night time and
05:04 so yeah between like the artwork that is very reflective of plants as well the texture that's
05:10 on the wallpaper everything for me is a layer of exactly how I wanted to feel like a treehouse in
05:18 the middle of the tropics. This is how I wake up with all of my plants and with disco playing
05:22 because I do have that timed at like 6 30 in the morning. So we are in my sunroom. Whenever I'm
05:36 designing a space there's always a challenge and so this for instance was green astroturf so I
05:44 wanted this to really feel like yes a sunroom but more of like my den like where we come to
05:51 this is where you come and drink wine this is where the incense is playing I have a record
05:55 player over there the light that's over here is kind of an ode to my favorite era which is the
06:01 70s and so if you can tell as well the disco ball. These chairs are from the Cabo line of Albany Park
06:08 which means welcome home and so it is so cool because these are velvet but this is really the
06:15 space that I would imagine my parents would party in in the 70s and like be yelling at their friends
06:21 in the kitchen to bring this whatever it may be we're not going to say what it is but anyway
06:26 whatever beverage we will say and just to have fun and really let your hair down or let your
06:32 mustache down and yeah we're in the the place where I nap where I work sometimes and where I start my day.
06:39 Alrighty y'all so this room is my office and since I do kind of have I don't know I'm trying to see
06:58 how many professions but there are two professions that operate in this room and so on this side I
07:04 actually do my jewelry making and so I have a jewelry brand and I keep everything on this
07:09 side but then whenever I'm wanting to do the administrative work and do my design work
07:13 then I am playing over here and so this is where I have all of my samples and get a little bit of a
07:19 preview of what my kitchen will be because all of those samples are over here but then like all of
07:23 the important work the documents live here and so I'm able to sit here and really separate the rest
07:30 of my house from the work. One thing that is important about this room is that the walls were
07:36 textured and typically you're not able to put wallpaper over textured walls but since this is
07:42 mud cloth fabric and or it's an iteration of mud cloth fabric I wanted it to have that extra
07:48 movement and wanted to have those extra bumps because that's how the fabric is and so if you
07:52 like come up here and feel it it really does feel like mud cloth and I wanted it to be something
07:58 that kind of grounded the space and so I usually use black to ground all of my spaces but I wanted
08:04 to use blue and here it is one of my favorite colors and it works well with the constant that
08:10 I have in my house that is yellow. I also wanted to make sure that I was very intentional of playing
08:15 with the textures that are also present in the plants and so with snake plants again it kind of
08:21 mimics the wallpaper a little bit and so I wanted to make sure that there was a little bit of pattern
08:27 play and you can do that with the plants that you have. I really wanted to play with so much texture,
08:34 so much color, so much pattern play and also wanted to do so with the rug that I have because
08:40 this again is another take on an African pattern and so I really want all of my spaces to reflect
08:48 my culture, reflect where I come from but then do it in a way that really speaks to my design style
08:54 and also because 70s is very much one of my things I wanted pieces of felt artwork up and then one
09:01 that kind of feels like a shag rug and so art, culture, and just my love of the tropics that's
09:09 what inspired this space. So right now we're getting ready to go to my greenhouse. I wanted to
09:15 have this space because as a kid I've always wanted a greenhouse. I have always admired them
09:23 and like seeing them on movies and I wanted a place that I could just really be one with my
09:28 plants outside of my house. In most of my home or all of my home really there are a lot of textures
09:33 and so I kind of almost do it automatically at this point but I do texture mixing or pattern
09:40 play all of those things through the different plants that I bring in so you will see that there
09:44 will be different colors but how like the different shapes are with the the leaves but then you'll also
09:49 see on other plants that are like the dumb canes or even the snake plants that are out here as well
09:54 there will be different striations that kind of have the the rhythm that I want to because every
09:59 place again and there's no one specific song but I do have a playlist that inspired this this space
10:05 but I would think that if anyone wanted to like really create a unique space think about how you
10:11 want the room to feel but then like literally how do you want the room to feel so like even the
10:17 different reading that is in the the rattan furniture that's in the glass and then the
10:22 mixture because I love to do smooth or fine and rough and so I did a really nice tiled floor which
10:29 probably shouldn't be in anybody's greenhouse but it's in mine and then mix it with the function
10:34 and different texture of the rocks because I can water my plants and don't have to worry about the
10:39 water coming out to the floor that we're stepping on because it will retreat and then go under some
10:45 of the holes that I have drilled off into the actual structure so everything has function
10:50 but it has to look good form and function or how I operate.
10:53 I'm David Quarles and you're watching Home and Texture House Tours.