Most new homeowners, after closing on a property, might discover a few questionable design choices left by previous inhabitants: kitschy drawer liners, oddly placed moldings, carpet where carpet doesn’t belong. When Gen Sohr and her husband, Benjamin, bought their nearly century-old home in Nashville a decade ago, it was more like wandering into the real-estate version of a carnival fun house.

“We bought it from the estate of the original owner,” recalls Sohr, the founder of Pencil & Paper Co., a design studio turned multidisciplinary creative brand with sought-after product collaborations, a popular blog, live events, and more. The house, built in 1927 by an ardent Francophile, was infused with flamboyant touches—gilded mirrors, flocked wallpaper. “But what I really fell in love with was the garden folly in the backyard, which was added in the 1960s,” says Sohr. “The owner filled it with citrus trees and orchids and had opera music funneled in!”

Sold. After embarking on necessary renovations to the Monterey Revival structure—taking it down to the studs and installing new electrical and plumbing—the Sohrs set about tailoring the layout to their own modern-day lifestyle as a family of three (the couple has a teenage son). “We left the main structure of the house in place, but we reimagined the rooms,” Sohr says. “For example, my husband and I like to have our bedroom on the main level, so our primary suite is a combination of the original dining room, kitchen, and guest bedroom.” The third floor, originally unused attic space, became the family room, with built-in bunks for sleepovers and a hangout zone for movie night.

As a design laboratory for Pencil & Paper Co., the house has become a showcase for the Sohrs’ aesthetic point of view, an ebullient blend of classic bones and modern details, rich in prints and motifs—and a palette of colors as varied as a jumbo box of Crayola crayons. “There’s a lot of blue and white, which is happy and classic and easy to live with, but it’s the juxtaposition of the other colors that we’ve layered on top that makes it feel very much ‘us,’” Sohr explains. “We’re very influenced by art and travel and beautiful fabrics that we’ve fallen in love with, so we let that set the tone.”

In the entry hall, squiggly lines scuttle up the walls; the wood floor beneath is painted in a white checkerboard pattern—“Because it’s only one color, it feels very livable”—that continues into the kitchen, where a sky-blue ceiling brightens the mood. A playful bird-patterned wallpaper, which Sohr first spotted on a trip to the Soho Grand in New York, fills a room in the primary suite. In the family room, inky charcoal paint adds instant cozy and helps ground the colorful art and patterned textiles. “This big, dark space creates a nice canvas for all the things that we wanted to layer over it,” says Sohr. “As a creative, I’m never worried about making a mistake in design because I know there is always a way to make it work in how you style it.”

When in doubt over a color choice, Sohr—a former retail executive for Old Navy and Victoria’s Secret—happily admits that she can be a pushover for good branding. “I’m crazy about names, so when I’m picking a paint color, if the name really resonates, that helps me make a decision,” she says. Case in point: the library, painted in Julep by Sherwin-Williams. “It was this happy, statement-making green that I hadn’t seen before, and as soon as I saw the name, it was instantly, ‘Done!’” Sohr recalls. “Being in the South, going to the Kentucky Derby, the idea of a mint julep—it created this sense of storytelling, which I love.”

Sohr found ways to stay true to the home’s past even while wielding her own proverbial paintbrush. “I wanted to honor some of the owner’s original decisions,” she says. So when she found a set of wooden garden planters that he had built and painted a French green, she purloined the hue, employing it everywhere from her closet (in the form of cabinet trim and checkerboard floors) to striped garage doors to a painted plaque on the front of the house, emblazoned with the family’s name—a perfect epigraph to the home’s next chapter.

THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN VOLUME 12 OF FREDERIC MAGAZINE. CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE!