Tasked with refreshing a beloved family property in Texas Hill Country, designer Alison Giese recruited stylist Leigh Gill and photographer Yanglin Cai to capture the home’s layered, lived-in beauty.
DESIGNER
ALISON GIESE
San Antonio
This is my husband’s family home, which was purchased by his grandparents and decorated by his grandmother. It is a house that is very sacred to his family. For a very long time, it has been like: Everything has to stay the same. But some pretty serious maintenance issues started to arise and it became clear that we had to address these things to preserve the house. That’s when I told my husband, “If we’re going to repair cracks in walls and refinish floors, we’re going to have all the furnishings out.” So we decided that it was time for us to refresh the house to fit our current family—that we could make these changes to our taste and still keep the heart of the home. The brief was to change as little as possible while making it fresh.

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