“The entrance to me is like an art gallery,” says Roberta of her apartment’s foyer, where several large works have pride of place. “You should be able to just sit down and look at the paintings if you want to.” Rich burnished woods and a velvet-upholstered settee—backed with a vintage Indian textile—warm up the crisp white walls and mosaic-tile floor.
White Venetian-plaster walls (done by Roberta’s sister, as are many of the other finishings throughout the home) give the living room an airy feel—and create a clean backdrop for artwork. “I decided that I needed something that would bring out the paintings as opposed to bury them,” Roberta says. Color comes instead from the works themselves, along with an array of brilliantly hued textiles.
The Freymanns love to entertain, so a proper dining space was a priority. A striking Baccarat crystal chandelier (found at auction and once owned by the Mexican movie star María Félix) presides over lively dinner parties, where Roberta, an avid cook, serves up seasonal favorites—fresh fish in summer, pastas and risottos in winter.
Against the bright dining room walls, painted in Benjamin Moore’s Capri Seas, Roberta’s antique furnishings take on a fresh, modern flair. “I always paint my dining rooms a very fun color,” Roberta says. “When you’re entertaining, your surroundings should be entertaining.”
Roberta’s dinner-party essentials include “good food, great wine, hopefully fun guests, and a beautiful table.” The latter is accomplished through a lively mix of old and new: She pairs her family’s heirloom crystal, china, and silver with colorful block-printed table linens from her line. “What I’ve inherited is very serious,” Roberta notes. “It can look kind of stuffy if you don’t bring it down a notch with something whimsical.”
Many of the apartment’s windows are finished with a swathe of richly hued silk. Roberta spotted the sumptuous yards of fabric at a market in Bangkok, and with a loose color scheme in her head, “I started just picking out silks that sang to me. The price was so reasonable that I said, ‘What’s the worst that can happen if it doesn’t work?’”
If there were any doubt about Roberta’s love of color, the home’s jewel-box office would prove otherwise. Coated in a poppy-red lacquer (“I can’t remember how many coats they did, but it was quite a lot!”), the walls seem to pulse with energy—and cast a warm glow over everything (and everyone) in the space. “My attitude is that all colors go together,” Roberta says. “You can just have fun.”
The guest bedroom is the home’s one “totally Roller Rabbit room,” Roberta says. From the sheets to the pillows to the fabric tepee, every textile boasts the brand’s signature block prints. Even the walls get in on the pattern play, decked out in a hand-stenciled design (courtesy of Roberta’s sister) modeled after a palace Roberta visited in India.
With her well-earned reputation for beautiful linens, it’s no surprise that Roberta has mastered the art of making the bed. There’s a little work involved—”at least the top sheet has to get ironed because otherwise your bed will look messy”—but the payoff is major. Unsurprisingly, these twin beds are highly coveted by guests.
Each bed gets its own mix of Roller Rabbit textiles—Roberta keeps things fresh by switching up the linens and experimenting with layered patterns. “I don’t think that there’s problem with mixing prints as long as there’s a harmony,” she says.
Velvety Venetian-plaster walls give the master bedroom a sense of serenity. “You don’t want something too unharmonious in your bedroom—you don’t want something that doesn’t calm you,” Roberta says. One bold stroke: the magenta silk curtains, another part of her haul from the Bangkok market.