Interior Designer in New Canaan, Connecticut
Roughan Interiors creates considered interiors for homes throughout New Canaan, a town whose architecture runs from classic Georgian estates to mid-century modern residences shaped by the Harvard Five. We begin each interior design project with an understanding of the home, its setting, and the people who live there, bringing together architecture, furnishings, art, and the details that make a space feel entirely its own.
New Canaan doesn’t announce itself.
You come around a bend in the road, past a stone wall and a specimen tree that’s been there longer than the house. And there it is, quietly confident, sitting back from the street. A New Canaan home doesn’t dominate its setting, and even a grand one can feel like a whisper.
The architecture is varied — shingle-style farmhouses, traditional New England colonials, serious modern homes — but what they share is restraint. Each one sits in dialogue with the property around it, rather than competing.
The families living in them are often juggling several generations under one roof, requiring spaces that can go from a formal dinner to a Tuesday with muddy boots at the door. They want a home that feels effortless and clear, where the rooms feel inevitable, as if they couldn’t have been envisioned any other way.
Interior Design Projects in New Canaan
A selection of our projects, from an outdoor space built for relaxation and entertaining to a renovation of a Georgian estate perfectly tailored to a family of five.
Collins Pond Club
An ivory brick Georgian on green acreage, where a full lower level was reimagined around the pond the house sits beside. Curved windows keep the water in view from the golf simulator and gym, the anchor of the level. A porthole door opens into a dark screening room whose seating doubles as a sleepover sofa.
Summer Soirée
A traditional New Canaan colonial where the outdoor living space was completely transformed by a significant patio expansion. The new layout created distinct but connected zones: a lounge area, an elegant dining space, a fully equipped kitchen and bar, and a pool house. Each was designed to sit naturally with the existing architecture and landscaping.
Gentlemen’s Study
A stately Georgian new build where the home office needed to reflect the client’s professional life and his passion for music. A complete gut renovation brought in a custom walnut desk, satin lacquer walls, and a curated collection of artwork featuring the musicians he admires, lit to become focal points in the room.
Classic Georgian Estate
A meticulously renovated Georgian estate designed around a family of five. The study makes an impression in chic black satin lacquer, while the lower level holds a wine cellar, a tasting room, and a home theater. Subtle blue tones run throughout, and the fabrics were chosen to hold up to daily life without giving up any elegance.
Inquire about your New Canaan project
Every home asks for something different. Tell us about yours.
Working with Roughan Interiors
Our New Canaan clients generally arrive having acquired a property with significant architectural pedigree, or having worked with an architect to build something new and wanting our perspective on how to finish it. In many instances, we have had the pleasure of recommending notable architects to guide the structure itself.
We spend time interpreting the nuances of a home, valuing its subtle elements as much as its overt features, well before selecting any design materials. The aim is a residence that feels as intelligent as the architecture enclosing it. Furniture, lighting, art, and materials are sourced from all over the world, with every detail customized to fit the family and the life they actually lead.
About
Roughan Interiors — based in Weston, Connecticut, with a studio presence in New York City — works with homeowners, architects, builders, and artisans on spaces designed to warmly receive clients wholly on their own terms. Christina S. Roughan, principal and founder, brings an award-winning fluency in texture, color, and unexpected pairings that has earned the trust of international celebrities, editors, and artists over a career spanning decades. A lifelong student of human nature and need, she internalizes the intimate daily workings of her clients to intuit the shape and form needed to hold the movement of their lives.
The Harvard Five in New Canaan, and How They Shaped Roughan Interiors
New Canaan is the rare town where modern architecture isn’t a footnote. In the late 1940s and 50s, a handful of young architects who had studied under Walter Gropius at Harvard settled here and started building houses that had almost nothing in common with the colonials around them: glass walls, flat roofs, structure left honest and exposed. Philip Johnson’s Glass House is the famous one, but the town is quietly full of the others, tucked into the woods on winding lanes.
In 2023 the New Canaan Museum & Historical Society invited Christina to talk about all of this alongside architect Thomas Kligerman, in a conversation moderated by Michael Boodro, host of The Chairish Podcast, former editor in chief of Elle Decor and, before that, eleven years at Vogue. It’s the kind of afternoon that reminds you how much thought this town has always put into how people actually live in a house, not just how it photographs.
Living in a Harvard Five home asks something different of a designer. You’re not layering in decoration to distract from the architecture; the architecture is the point, and the job is to furnish it with the same restraint it was built with. Warm materials instead of cold ones. Furniture that reads as sculpture rather than upholstery. A palette that lets the light do its work.
That thinking shapes every project we take on, including a colonial down the road. Modernism taught this town, and taught us, that a house doesn’t need excess to feel rich. It needs clarity.
Published In
“A former designer of retail spaces for Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger, Christina S. Roughan naturally instills classic Americana into her projects across New York and the Northeast. For quintessential New England living, look no further.” Architectural Digest
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CTC&G Magazine, December 2024 Top Bathrooms Recognized at Connecticut’s 2024 Innovation in Design Awards Finalist: Roughan Interiors
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At Home, November 2024 A-List Awards Issue: Bedroom Finalist, Roughan Interiors
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Westport Weston & Wilton, July/August 2023 Transported to Tuscany: Christina Roughan's Terrazza is Ideal for Summer Entertaining
Everything starts with a conversation
Roughan Interiors works with clients throughout Connecticut, New York, and beyond on custom interior design.