Ethereal Garden Pathway

Chicago-area designer Lauren Collander of Lauren Collander Interiors is known for her architectural balance in design and ability to design around historic architectural details. This made her the perfect person to redesign the first floor hall and stairwell for the 2025 Lake Forest Showhouse. She knew she wanted to create an architectural statement that balanced the home’s storied past and contemporary design. The resulting sublime elegance of the space—more than a mere passageway, but an unfolding of a series of moments imbued with wonder and quiet awe—speaks to Collander’s impeccable vision.

This charitable event, benefitting the Infant Welfare Society of Chicago, showcased the work of dozens of interior and landscape designers who reimagined the 15,000-square-foot Pembroke Lodge property in Lake Forest, IL, for ticketed visitors. The Georgian-style home was originally designed in 1895 by architect Henry Ives Cobb and redesigned in 1935 by David Adler and Frances Elkins. When Collander first arrived at the space she would be transforming, she was immediately struck by its grandeur. “You could feel the weight of the home’s history in the soaring architecture, from the intricate balustrade to the elegant proportions that spoke of another era,” she says.

Collander’s team envisioned a space that would feel timeless yet unexpected. They leaned heavily into a botanical theme with layers of natural beauty, traditional wainscotting, and geometric ceiling trim all harmonized with two symmetrical niches trimmed in Cambria’s Inverness Blakeley design.

When it came to the symmetrical hallway niches, Collander says, “those arches were honestly in the very first sketch. And quite frankly, there was just too much wood already in the space. We needed something else that was fresher.” She wanted to think outside the box and decided to create the arches with Cambria.

The debossed veining of the quartz design traverses vertically and wraps up and around each arch. Collander worked with stone fabricator Sprovieri’s Custom Counters to figure out how best to handle the arched fabrication. “We chose to do this reeded detail for a really unique texture at the top of each arch,” she says.

Collander refers to the saffron velvet seating created by Urban Craft Upholstery inside the arches as Parisian clouds inspired by the UP series by B&B Italia. Then, Collander collaborated with artist Stef Ross to create custom acrylic link art pieces that can be illuminated by small lights hidden into a channel fabricated into the Cambria. These modern, sculptural forms introduce a delicate interplay of light and contrasting contemporary design.

Another of Collander’s dreams materialized after a trip to Maison&Objet in Paris where she met Laura Cheung Wolf, founder of Lala Curio. The company specializes in hand-painted and embroidered chinoiserie wallpaper. “It just stops you in your tracks,” says Collander of the couture wallpaper’s beauty—and a design element that would become a captivating canopy of embellished fern fronds in the ethereal Parisian garden aesthetic Collander created.

The stair runner is meant to evoke a sense of water in the abstract, a bright blue creek bubbling down the staircase. And the hallway console table intersects the space with a combination of the repeated Inverness Blakeley quartz design contrasted with a more modern glam noir quartz design in Cambria’s Blackbrook. “It needs the black because the space is very feminine,” says Collander. “This is one of our design principles. We wanted that masculinity, that edge. I call it a little bit of fun. That’s what I call that.”

Collander also conceived a hidden garden bar tucked beneath the stairs—an inviting retreat that encourages people to pause, linger, and savor the journey through a beautifully designed home.

The detailing in this double-layer bar includes flowing curves and a graceful, elegant edge profile that feels both timeless and inviting to the touch. “We definitely wanted Remington Brass for the bar,” says Collander. “It’s dark and moody, and my favorite part is when light hits the brass—it looks fabulous next to the rich amber colors of my husband’s bourbon collection.”

She adds, “We were set on using quartz in all of the curves. Because we live in a rectangle world, and Cambria gave us this great opportunity to build anything we wanted.” And what Collander built is an experience as unique as the space itself.