When a wallpaper manufacturer announced a design contest, twin sisters Elisabeth Hanes of Fairhope and Bradley Weatherly of Birmingham didn’t just enter — they tore into a full bedroom renovation in the middle of the busiest season of the year. The result is a layered, color-drenched little boy’s room in Fairhope that the sisters describe as their own nod to the films of Wes Anderson.
The challenge came from UK-based Milton & King, one of the wallcovering and fabric companies the designers favor, which launched a competition for the best before-and-after using a wallpaper from its new children’s collection. The reward was a professionally photographed social media reveal; the catch was a timeline of less than a month that began, of all times, just after Christmas.
From Cullman twins to design partners
The identical twins, originally from Cullman, had always wanted to own a business together. They even picked a name: Sorella, Italian for sister. Both inherited a love of fabrics and interior design from their maternal grandmother and an eye for beauty from their mother, but Elisabeth figured they might own a store or a textile company — an interior design firm was never on her radar.
It happened almost by accident. Both sisters curated beautiful homes for their families and were constantly asked by friends to help them achieve the same polished but comfortable, collected aesthetic. Finally, Bradley’s husband pointed out that babysitters were costing a fortune while she worked for free — perhaps her design skills could be put to professional use. Bradley pitched the idea to Elisabeth, but with her hands full at the Hanes family’s downtown Fairhope retail store and restaurant, Provision, the timing didn’t seem right.
“She told me she was going to do it without me and call it Sorella anyway in the hopes I might change my mind. And of course, I regretted saying no immediately,” Elisabeth laughs. Working with her twin sounded like too much fun to pass up. Sorella Interiors was born, and the sisters have been busy designing and styling homes in Birmingham and Fairhope — and in Montgomery, Nashville and beyond — ever since.
A blank slate, finally
Elisabeth offered up her youngest child’s room as the blank slate. “We knew we were going to have a third child but didn’t find out if it was going to be a boy or a girl, so it was white and had never been decorated. I hated walking in there but just didn’t have the time or mental space to do it.” Her son Wright is now 4, and it was past time.
The proposal promised to take the room from drab, with low ceilings, to a layered space using fabrics, prints and textures that, surprisingly, should make it feel larger. Mixing antiques, unique art and natural materials would give the room a collected-over-time feel, and new wainscoting would add the architectural interest missing in a home of that era.
Designing over FaceTime
The only problem was the timeline. As Elisabeth swept up the mess of the holidays, the sisters quickly ordered fabrics, matched paint swatches and scoured the attic for pieces to reuse. Milton & King didn’t even have samples of the chosen wallpaper ready — the company offered a different pattern with similar colors but a black background. “So that was how we did it, over FaceTime, from Birmingham to Fairhope,” Elisabeth says. “And for some elements, one of us would have to say, ‘You have the sample there, you’re gonna have to pick this one.'”
By the end of January, just in the nick of time, the room came together. The sisters had it professionally photographed and submitted the final result to Milton & King in time for a big social media reveal. “December and January are not easy months to be doing a crazy project,” Elisabeth laughs — but the room is something she now enjoys entering, and hopes will always feel just right for Wright, no matter his age.
The design details
The room’s entire design was built around Topsy-Turvey in Rainbow by Milton & King. Using the wallpaper’s colors as the jumping-off point, Elisabeth chose Eating Room Red by Farrow & Ball for the wainscoting, trim, doors and vintage wicker desk, while the ceiling got Parma Grey by Farrow & Ball to visually raise the height and bring the sky indoors.
A soft Roman shade in blue offers a break from the busy wallpaper and folds neatly above the desk, keeping the study space tidy. A canopy in a solid Kravet fabric anchors the bed and creates a clean backdrop for the artwork above it — “Who’s Dreaming Who” by Melissa Lakey of Austin, Texas-based Little Van Gogh’s.
Vintage furniture gives the room its lived-in, collected-not-purchased feel. The bed belonged to Elisabeth’s husband, William, when he was a child; the desk chair, bookshelf, chest, chalk heads and wooden art by the window were all vintage finds from local antique stores and estate sales, and the wicker desk came out of her mother’s attic for a fresh coat of paint. A quilt in a timeless Irish Chain pattern — Crimson Crossings by The Six Bells — adds old-fashioned craftsmanship, and tailored Bungalow Plug-in Sconces by Matt Alford Studio in a Bordeaux lacquered finish work just as well for reading storybooks now as they will when studying fills Wright’s evenings.
More from the sisters is at sorellainteriors.co.