2007 HC&G IDEA HOUSE TOUR

Inspired by its wooded site, Kimberly Hall's pool house, featuring an interior seating area, kitchenette and bathroom, as well as an adjacent pergola and outdoor shower, evokes the rustic feel of a family campsite—though Hall used an over-the-top color palette. "I used furnishings that feel temporary, things you'd find in a tent, though it's all very luxurious," Hall says.

Through two large French doors, which Hall requested over a single door that was originally planned, the interior features an eye-popping area rug made from alternating strips of dyed cowhide. The thin lines of turquoise, orange, cream and tan are carried through in the surrounding floor tile and bathroom wall mosaics. The bright orange color also appears in pillows and a throw on the daybed, along with dinnerware in the kitchenette that pops against white, sea foam and light brown tiles arranged in a circular motif in the backsplash. ("I love orange!" she says. "My son and I wear orange all the time.") The whole is draped by a "tent" of fabric secured to the ceiling.

The bathroom—a sliver of a space in the back that feels large, considering the entire pool house is only 13 feet square—is accessible through pocketing French doors. "I like the idea of having the bathroom as a focal point. It really opens up with the doors," Hall says. The room-within-a-room has an unusual "campaign-style" wash stand and sink—a basin on a folding wooden base—that sits below a simple oval mirror flanked by sconces from Urban Archaeology.

In the pool area outside, teak lounges from Sutherland add a little edge to the rusticity. "I have a contemporary style infused with a traditional look," Hall says. "I knew I wanted something modern and the teak lent itself to it." Modern and traditional are also wedded in playful accent pieces dotting the area—animal figures, toad stools, mushroom caps, glossy white tree stumps—that transform the setting into a surreal, enchanted garden.