New Southern Comforts

Go inside two classic homes that define today’s refreshed Lowcountry aesthetic, a careful juxtaposition of modernity and Southern charm

As the charisma of the Lowcountry continues to  bewitch travelers, gadabouts building vacation homes, and retirees from all corners of the globe establishing family homesteads, the traditional aesthetic of the Southern vernacular home has taken on new attributes, resulting in a more refined sense of Southern modernity. While timeless characteristics like deep porches, transom windows and shutters remain, the most alluring homes constructed today celebrate the area’s rich architectural heritage without being staunchly historic, empty echoes of the past. Instead, they are a creative riff on tradition, a type of architectural vocalese where the design and build team encourages the homeowner to improvise along a guided theme. The denouement of this practice is what Victorian interior designer Elsie De Wolfe described as “a house that is like the life that goes with it.”

It should come as no surprise then that at Coastal Signature Homes, led by principal and second generation homebuilder, Steve Tilton, the chief goal for his design build team is to get to know their customer. “It is only through building an intimate relationship with our clients that we can impeccably layer interiors with a signature blend of clean layouts, time-tested materials, and personal touches that enable our clients to live their best life in their new home. It’s less about the house, and more about the lives led inside the walls,” says Tilton. Leah England, Director of Client Engagement, agrees, adding, “our homes, though distinctive from the curb, all have a slight offbeat quality that comes from encouraging our customers to color a bit outside ‘the lines’. We enable our clients to do something just for themselves. That might be as simple as finding a small unused area and developing a fly-tying workbench, designing a coffee station, installing a massive 5’ galley sink to allow for serious entertaining, or even something as grand as recreating a gazebo to resurrect cherished memories at Girl Scout camp.”

The personal narrative the Coastal Signature Homes team helps their customers craft is perhaps what makes their homes, and those seen here, so memorable.  As Billy Baldwin once said, “Any house or room remembered with pleasure has the look of being loved by those who live in it.”