Lincoln
Coffered ceilings, built-in cabinetry, and light blue kitchen millwork on the main level, with herringbone hardwood floors carrying through a finished basement below.
Coffered ceilings run the full span of the main level, and from the living room you can see all the way through to the kitchen and the staircase beyond. That kind of openness only works when the trim details are tight enough to hold it together — the coffers, the wainscoting below the sight line, the wide baseboards — otherwise it just feels like a big empty box. The light hardwood floors run continuous through every room on this level, no transitions, no thresholds. Quiet and wide and connected.
Then you turn to the kitchen and the scale closes in. Light blue shaker cabinets pull the whole room into a tighter, cooler register against the white countertops and white subway tile backsplash. The farmhouse sink sits centered under a window that's sized right — big enough to light the work surface, not so big that it crowds the upper cabinet layout on either side. Stainless appliances, clean lines, and a cabinet color that actually has some personality to it.
The primary bath goes soft where the kitchen went crisp. A freestanding soaking tub sits below the window on marble-look tile that wraps floor to wall in one continuous plane, and floating wood shelves break up all that white with some warmth. Chrome fixtures throughout. The gray vanity with its white countertop grounds the far wall, but the homeowner's eye goes to the tub first — that's kind of where it should land in a room like this.
Downstairs the herringbone flooring shifts the rhythm entirely. Light wood planks laid at angles give the basement a texture the main level doesn't have, and the built-in bar with gray cabinetry and a wine cooler makes the space feel finished in a way that's deliberate, not decorated. Stair treads in matching light wood tie the two levels together visually. I would venture to guess most basements in Lincoln get LVP and a coat of paint, but the delta between that and this is something you feel the second you come down the stairs.
Back upstairs, the fireplace surround uses a decorative tile that's more intricate than what you'd expect next to built-in cabinets with glass doors and hardwood floors. That's the contrast working again. Wainscoting wraps the lower walls, the built-ins frame the firebox with real shelving behind real glass, and the tile pattern draws your eye to the center of the room. Sometimes a fireplace is just heat, and sometimes it's the thing that makes a room worth sitting in.