Home & Living

City Sanctuary

Inside Nick and Robin Ciotti’s Guilford home.

HAPPY PLACE: The vision for the room was to create a refuge from the hustle and bustle of the city. Our goal was to find warm and comfortable pieces to create a place where we could relax. 

COMFORT ZONE: The space was pretty bare when we got it. Normally, we tend to gravitate towards mid-century modern stuff but it’s typically not the coziest style, so we went with things that were cozier to lounge in. It’s definitely a touch bohemian, and then the plan was to add a lot of greenery to bring in more color. 

LIFE CHANGING: We wanted there to be some life in the room so we got hanging plants from B. Willow in Remington. We also found this vintage birdcage that we stuck a fern into and it’s since thrived so we’ve kept it there. 

UNDER THE INFLUENCE: We follow local stores like Wishbone Reserve in Mt. Washington, Cedar and Cotton in Southwest Baltimore, and Off Main in Catonsville on Instagram. They are always inspiring us with different pieces and design ideas. 

SITTING PRETTY: The rocking chair is an old Eames rocking chair. We aren’t sure how old it is but my guess would be that it was made in the sixties. We found it at Home Anthology in Catonsville! 

CUT A RUG: The carpet is a hundred-year-old Kazak rug from Wishbone Reserve. We loved how vibrant it was and how the pattern had blues and greens in it, which is hard to find. It’s more geometric and tribal, which makes it unique from all of the floral patterns you typically see. However, when we got it, it had some tears and a hole in it. The excellent folks at Main Street Oriental in Ellicott City did an absolutely wonderful job of repairing it. They even matched the pattern and workmanship and their work probably doubled the value of the piece. 

TABLE IT: The table (also from Wishbone Reserve—Julie has a great eye!) is pretty unusual. It’s stone with little pebbles encased on a resin top, so it’s really earthy and free-flowing as far as shapes. We don’t like anything that has lines that are too rigid. 

SHED LIGHT ON: We recently put curtains up in the room to keep it cooler during the summer months. Finding curtains that had a little texture and were sheer enough to diffuse light through was difficult. We ended up going with a Belgian flax fabric from Pottery Barn.