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HC & G Hampton Cottages and Gardens Take Two by Liz Arnold Scott Sanders and Ani Antreasyan are designers and old friends.  But they took different approaches when decorating their Hamptons cottages.  As dear friends, former officemates and frequent collaborators, Scott Sanders and Ani Antreasayan, an interior designer and a landscape designer, respectively, have a shared past.  But when it came to decorating their summer rentals, located in different corners of the Hamptons, the designers went their own independent ways. Sanders' story starts a few years ago, when a real estate agent showed him the tiny cottage off a private lane in Bridgehampton. The designer had a "just-give-me-the-contract" moment the second he peeked in the windows. "I knew this was it," he recalls. Fortunately, the owners of the property gave Sanders--who once worked for Ralph Lauren's Home Collection--carte blanche to transform the cottage.  The layout was simplicity itself: a living area and kitchen, one bedroom, a bathroom and a sleeping loft.  To make more space, Sanders removed the owners' dining table and chairs, opting instead to eat outdoors under an umbrella, often by the light of tiki torches.  The outdoors became an extended living area. Because he wanted to play with color, Sanders decorated with bright, ocean inspired cobalt accented by summer grass green, he favored vivid fabrics from SeaCloth, a company he relies on for clients, too. "It's perfect for the beach," he says. "It's durable heavy cotton so you can get sand on it and just wipe it off. It holds its color and always looks great." As for furnishings, he created an approachable look by mixing high-quality items from his own collection, including a table from Ralph Lauren Home, with inexpensive pieces such as green and yellow tables from IDEA.  Despite the home's small size, the sleeping loft and a pullout sofa can boost capacity up to four people--a good number for a slumber party. There's also an outdoor shower that "helps a lot" when guests are visiting, notes Sanders. Fifteen minutes away in East Hampton, Antreasyan is most often found on the terrace off the upstairs bedroom of her cottage.  "I'm an outdoor person, so I have to have a lot of light," she says. "This is like a treehouse.  Sometimes I have to duck because there are so many birds flying by." Lured to the Hamptons to work on clients' projects, the landscape designer quickly realized she needed a year-round place to stay.  Fortunately, clients offered her a cottage on their property, where she now resides up to nine months of the year. Antreasyan typically designs gardens to feel like an extension of a home's interior, but in her rental she reversed the plan, bringing the outdoors inside.  Sycamore branches are stacked in the living room, an arrangement of stones sits on a windowsill and a huge root curls on a low table--all against a pastoral backdrop of blues and greens, a muted contrast to Sanders' punchy palette.  In her bedroom, coral pieces complement her calming, cream-and-white bed linens, and elsewhere garden elements as stone planters and urns strike additional natural tones.  "I've become so used to seeing stone around that I use it inside now, not just outside," she explains. To furnish the cottage, Antreasyan brought some of her own pieces and supplemented them with finds from antique shows and the occasional estate sale in the Hamptons.  "If you do it in the right shade and the right design, I think you can get away with anything," she says. "As long as it's style you're putting forward." Shopping is one passion the pair still share, and with the abundance of stylish stores in the area they have ample opportunities for sprees. "There's a New York aesthetic attached to the Hamptons," says Sanders, who often sources pieces fro clients here. "But it feels like a small town." Antreasyan adds, "Plus, I can hear the ocean."

27 WEST 24TH STREET, SUITE 803  NEW YORK NY 10010   ·   TEL 212 343 8298  ·   FAX 212 343 8299  ·   info@scottsandersllc.com