Cara Woodhouse's Noyack Cottage: A Family Room That Makes Space for More

At Cara Woodhouse’s Sag Harbor retreat, the main living area moves easily between everyday lounging and overnight hosting—with help from Resource Furniture’s Curve Sofa and LGM Queen wall bed.

A modern living room featuring a large white built-in shelving and media wall with a black flat-screen TV in the center. This media wall rotates into a wall bed. The room is styled with a glass-top coffee table, textured cream boucle sofa, pink pillows, and decorative objects on the shelves.

For interior designer Cara Woodhouse, a successful room is not simply something to look at. It is something to experience.

That philosophy shapes every corner of Noyack Cottage, a 1928 shingle-style home in Sag Harbor that Woodhouse transformed through a complete renovation. Conceived as a rentable, boutique-style retreat, the cottage invites guests to live with the designer’s distinctive mix of bold forms, natural materials, layered textures, and moments of playful surprise.

Throughout the home, soft pinks, sandy neutrals, and pale greens meet sculptural lighting, expressive stone, painterly wall coverings, and Woodhouse’s signature curves. The result feels joyful without becoming busy, luxurious without losing its sense of ease.

It is also designed to work beautifully.

Woodhouse describes comfort, flow, and function as central to her practice. Her goal is to create spaces that feel enveloping and intuitive - rooms that encourage people to settle in, connect, and stay awhile. At Noyack Cottage, that approach is especially clear in the multifunctional family room, where Resource Furniture helped one space take on several roles with ease.

A smiling woman sits cross-legged on a cream boucle sofa in a bright, modern living room. She is wearing a white textured button-up shirt and slate blue pants.

A Cottage Designed Around Connection

Noyack Cottage was created for gathering. Its open-plan living and dining areas connect naturally to an expansive outdoor setting with a pool, outdoor kitchen, pool house, fire pit, and meditation studio. Inside, rooms are layered with tactile materials and comfortable furnishings that invite guests to move through the home at their own pace.

The house may be highly considered, but it does not feel precious. Woodhouse selected durable, cleanable fabrics and practical materials that could support real life, including families, entertaining, and the rhythms of a frequently used vacation home.

That balance between beauty and usability carries into the family room. Rather than dedicating the space to a single purpose, Woodhouse designed it to support daily relaxation, informal gathering, television watching, and overnight guests. The room remains open and comfortable when the bed is not needed, then becomes a proper guest room when company arrives.

The Curve Sofa: Comfort in Every Direction

A woman sits barefoot on a large cream boucle sectional sofa with two fluffy cream dogs resting on the couch in a bright, modern living room with large windows and a glass coffee table.

At the center of the room is Resource Furniture’s Curve Sofa, selected for both its sculptural presence and its everyday comfort. Its soft silhouette feels entirely at home within Woodhouse’s visual language. Cara has spoken about the way curves create softness, movement, and an instinctive sense of calm. The Curve Sofa contributes to that rhythm while giving the room a generous, inviting place to gather. Its movable backrests create a relaxed place to sit, stretch out, or spend time together, and can even be removed entirely for an extra sleeping surface in a pinch. The pale boucle upholstery adds to the cottage’s light, tonal palette, but it was chosen with practicality in mind. Its removable, cleanable covers make everyday and long-term maintenance a breeze.

The sofa does not merely fill the room. It helps establish how the room is lived in: comfortably, informally, and together.

A Guest Room, Hidden in Plain Sight

A woman sits on a premium murphy bed in a modern family room featuring a large built-in shelving unit with decorative objects on either side of a fabric headboard.

The room’s most transformative element is the LGM wall bed.

Integrated into a custom wall system, the bed remains nearly invisible during the day. Shelving, display space, and a television give the installation the appearance and function of a refined media wall. When guests arrive, the system converts into a comfortable queen-size bed.

The transformation is simple and intuitive. Objects can remain on the shelves, the television rotates with the system, and the bed lowers smoothly. There is no need to clear the room, move furniture from one space to another, or store temporary bedding elsewhere.

A woman in a white shirt and gray pants stands in a bright room, opening a built-in white media wall that reveals a queen wall bed.

Guests would never know a premium queen bed was concealed within the built-in. That element of surprise suits a project filled with what she calls “eye candy,” but the LGM offers something more enduring than a visual reveal: it makes the room genuinely useful.

By incorporating a premium mattress into the family room, the cottage gains flexible sleeping accommodations without sacrificing the room’s primary purpose. Guest comfort is prioritized without having to preserve a separate bedroom that may sit unused for much of the year.

More Hospitality, Without More Square Footage

For a vacation home, flexibility is a form of hospitality. Plans change, families grow, and weekends often bring more guests than expected. A room that can shift from family space to guest suite gives the home greater capacity while preserving the calm, open feeling Woodhouse worked to create.

The Curve Sofa and LGM Queen wall bed work together as a system and allow the family room to serve two distinct purposes. By day, it is an inviting space to gather and relax. At night, it becomes a luxurious guest room.

Together, the pieces give Noyack Cottage added flexibility while preserving the room’s unique character.

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