Tour an Incredibly Romantic Home in Palm Beach
When LinQing Yang—called LQ by her friends—first moved to the U.S. from the Chinese port city of Xiamen in 2009, it was to Ohio, where she lived in an extremely modern dwelling in which she was never quite at ease. For her next chapter in Florida, she was determined to move to an abode that perfectly captured her quirky personality and eclectic tastes. Today, that residence is a sunny and art-filled Palm Beach manse, which was designed by Caroline Rafferty Interiors. (MHK Architecture & Planning and Nievera Williams created the wild and magical garden.)
By the time Yang met her beau, a Palm Beach denizen, she had already grown enamored with the city, and snagged two pieces of memorable furniture—an orange table and mirrored chest—from one of its antique shops. “I felt welcome in Palm Beach,” Yang recalls.
After darting between a series of rentals in the area, Yang was taken by a 1920s residence crafted by the late prolific architect Addison Mizner. The structure was originally built on an oceanfront site and transported to a smaller lot, all before a 4,000-square-foot basement—ideal for accommodating Yang’s furniture-collecting habit—was added by the previous owner. “The first time I walked in, my thought was, ‘Wow, I’m going to throw a lot of parties,’” Yang remembers.
Once she purchased it, the ideas started flowing. “The Ohio house never felt like home because I wanted a place with character, to seize color and pattern because that’s what I love. I appreciate the old and traditional,” Yang says. Caroline Rafferty immediately sensed, and was impressed by, Yang’s vast vision, which drew inspiration from such disparate sources as London designer Nina Campbell and the mid-19th-century Hôtel de la Païva in Paris.
“She was so visually focused. She didn’t mess with any of the original details, but she wanted the house to be an escape, a different world, a place where she could play music in that big living room and do ballet,” Rafferty says.
Yang approached Rafferty just as the pandemic unfurled in March 2020. One of the biggest challenges was ensuring that Yang’s penchant for the past didn’t result in “a time capsule,” as Rafferty puts it. Balance was key. “We wanted to create a legacy home, but it needed modern interjections,” designer Christina Sugathapala, who worked with Rafferty on the project, says. Today, there are 1940s console tables adorning the entry hall, a contemporary blue sofa in the living room, and different colored chairs in the dining room. Above the fireplace in the living room, backdropped by a floral yellow wallpaper, there is a mirror that Yang designed herself with a curving white dogwood frame.
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The more dated elements are indeed special. In one of her suitcases from China, Yang packed a tangle of antique embroidered tapestries that conjured fond memories of her grandmother. Caroline Rafferty Interiors, with the help of a local artisan, painstakingly transformed them into window treatments and bed hangings.
Sugathapala considers the bedroom one of the more surprising spaces. Cloaked in hand-painted walls reminiscent of elegantly patterned papers, the room showcases a regal bed. “It’s from [RH], but it’s gilded,” she says. “We wanted something Regency-style. We made a super fussy bed skirt and let LQ pick her favorite embroidery. When she looks up there is a peacock embroidered in the center.”
Along with the impressive tapestries, Yang infused the home with books and Chinese porcelain. “During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, so much was damaged and destroyed. Living overseas, where things we rarely see in China anymore are at auction houses, I have a chance to buy them and bring them back,” she explains.
As for the home itself, Rafferty says: “It was a forgotten house, and now it has so much life.” Sugathapala chimes in: “It’s the make believe residence everyone wants to live in.” And Yang takes none of it for granted. “When I wake up, the first thing I do is open the window. I see the palm trees and birds and sunlight shining through, hitting on my embroideries, and I sense gratefulness in this romantic, dreamy environment,” she says. “It’s the best feeling one could have.”
