Life comes in waves, dots, scallops and abstract stripes for busy mom Bonnee Sharp. This 35-year-old Lakewood textile designer, whose fab fabrics are offered in the top Schumacher showrooms around the country, also trained her exacting eye on the two-story contemporary home that she shares with her attorney husband, Marc Fuller, and their daughters, Georgia, 4, and Genevieve almost 1.
Two summers ago, the family traded their 1924 M Street Tudor for a new, large contemporary residence not far from Studio Bon Textiles’ Gaston Avenue headquarters. The new digs boast towering ceilings as well as meters of white mouldings. Sharp painted the walls gray and the cabinets bright white, and installed numerous avant-garde lighting fixtures purchased from ylighting.com.
She went to town on the fabrics, too.
“I gravitate toward pattern and color,” Sharp says. “If I had more rooms, I might go neutral because I appreciate neutral rooms. But I need to get my color out. It’s so hard for me to deny myself color.”
Her own line of graphic textiles comes in a range of vibrant hues, including the candy pink in her popular “Ric Rac” pattern, and a soothing blue for the graphic circles of her bestselling “Fuzz.” At home, Sharp used dozens of her own fabrics to make various spaces sizzle.
“The girls’ playroom is one of my favorite rooms in the house,” she says of the large, second-story space. She painted two walls in chalkboard paint, and she notes that, “It was a fun excuse to go darker than I usually would with gray, but because the other two walls and the trim are white, it works.” She hung yellow-green curtains and upholstered the seating in various blues and grays.
“I did the room before Genevieve was born so I didn’t want it to be pink,” she explains. “It turned out to be a great, bright area.”
In daughter Georgia’s room, “Wired” (Sharp’s wry silhouettes of birds sitting on lines) is set against woven gingham. Genevieve, meanwhile, has all custom textiles that include a wave pattern, bunnies, plus Bonnee’s abstract take on the ABCs.
“I’d like to do a kid’s collection one of these days,” says Sharp, who worked in New York City in advertising after graduating from SMU. Upon relocating to join her now-husband on the west coast, Sharp enrolled in extension courses on design at UCLA. Once the couple moved back to Dallas, she took a job with Emily Summers Design Associates, among the city’s most respected firms. Sharp soon began designing custom textiles for their clients. After Georgia arrived in 2007, she left the company to strike out on her own.
A longtime fan of antique and vintage stores, Sharp knew she wanted a modern, mid-century vibe in her own home. She scavenged and searched to make it happen. An estate sale in her native Austin yielded a sleek teak dining table and coordinating chairs. The set now resides in her kitchen along with playful Moooi pendant lights, gray granite countertops and white tiles on the walls.
The foursome actually eats in the family room at a white Saarinen-style tulip table. The formal dining room, meanwhile, morphed into a living room that now houses a modern sofa, low-slung hand-me-down chairs covered in black and white fabric and original artwork.
“I was out and about running errands while working with Emily and I found these amazing trees in Dallas north of 635 just filled with nests.” Fortunately, she had her camera in the car. The trio of portraits now adorning the space resulted from the adventure.
Sharp has mastered an eclectic yet clean mix of furnishings, from dramatic red Tikal Cerámica bowls found on a trip to Buenos Aires to myriad hobnail glass pieces collected while living in New York. The hunt entices her to this day.
“I can name about 35 great vintage or antique stores in Dallas that I just love,” she says. “Even just looking around the shops inspires me.”
