Life on Nantucket: A look into one family’s ‘Sconset oasis

Just like the sea’s many colors, this Siasconset home is a prismatic homage to the creative convergence of a designer and homeowner

The ocean has many colors. One day it’s blue, the next green, and in no two places is it ever the same. But in this fluidity is where it finds its beauty. In Malibu the sea is often turquoise—an ever-present reminder of warm days when the sun’s pleasant embrace is like that of a dear friend. On the East Coast, the waves are often a deep, wintery blue—a tribute to the natural beauty present throughout the seasons. And on Nantucket? There’s nothing quite like it. Christopher Paolini once wrote: “The sea is emotion incarnate. It loves, hates, and weeps. It defies all attempts to capture it with words and rejects all shackles. No matter what you say about it, there is always that which you can’t.” But no one ever said that the beauty of the deep blue sea couldn’t be captured by design.

“When you walk in, the first thing you see is this surfboard hanging from the ceiling, and it immediately sets the tone that this is a fun, beachy house,” says the proud owner of a colorful Siasconset house designed by Nina Liddle of Nina Liddle Design. The vision for this project was a wonderful intersection between classic Nantucket style and Malibu beach color. “My vision was a modern edge with clean lines and a lot of white contrasted with bright, colorful accents,” explains the homeowner. 

Having worked for years on Nantucket, bringing color and excitement to this island home was a task that Liddle was more than fit to handle. “She really captured what was in my head,” says the homeowner, “and she did it in a way that was clean, contemporary and grounded in organic elements.”