Meant To Be
Writer Marirose Krall | Photographer Andrew Frasz | Designer Malyev Schafer | Location Short Hills, NJA series of positive portents leads a designer and her family to a Short Hills home
“Everything about it was serendipitous,” Yana Schafer says about discovering this Midcentury-style home in Short Hills. Schafer, of design firm Malyev Schafer, which has offices in Short Hills and London, explains how everything fell into place the first time she entered the residence. She learned it had five bedrooms when it was built. When a child went off to college, the original owners converted one bedroom into an office and made it a part of the primary suite. “Meanwhile,” Schafer notes, “we have three kids, moved at the height of Covid and were working from home. It felt customized to us.”
But there was another cosmic coincidence: “When we first saw the house, we walked into the dining room. It was furnished with dining chairs just like I had bought at an auction a year earlier.” That was a clear indication for Schafer that this house was meant to be hers. “The style was already mine — even the furnishings were literally what I picked out.”
Schafer was drawn to the home’s contemporary aesthetic. “I’ve always loved that architecture,” she says. “I come from a family of architects. I was raised to love modernism. I just didn’t think I’d be able to find a house like this on the East Coast. When we saw the house go on the market, we weren’t really ready to move, but we bought it for the architecture. We didn’t think we could find a better house.”
Though this was the home of their dreams, the Schafers wanted to make a few changes. “The house in its original state had a very different mood. All the floors were dark, heavy brown ceramic tile, except for the bedrooms, which were carpeted. I wanted something clean but also eclectic.”
Schafer replaced the dark floors with light oak and furnished the spaces with pieces that work well with the home’s architectural roots. An onyx cocktail table grounds the living room, which is presided over by a large painting on the expansive wall above the sofa. “When we bought the house, I thought ‘I’m going to have to find a huge painting for that wall. Then I saw this. I already owned the onyx table, and this was in the same color palette. I snatched it up.”
Other items didn’t need to be purchased. Schafer notes, “there are a lot of ‘found’ things” included in the décor. A white console in the living room, for instance, was used by the previous owners as a wall-mounted media cabinet in their bedroom. “It’s custom melamine,” the designer explains. “It was built in so they left it behind. We took it off the wall and I added the round wooden legs to make it a standalone piece.” A marble carving displayed on top of the console was crafted by the previous owner who, at one time, had taken up sculpture.
The sofa in the sunken nook near the fireplace is another remnant from the previous occupants. “It’s custom for this room. That was a win,” she says. “There were so many beautiful things from the ’70s that I was just swooning over.”
Perhaps the most prominent of those beautiful things is the central atrium, a popular element in Midcentury architecture. “It’s everyone’s favorite,” Schafer says. “I had a party and hung disco lights in it. It’s the spirit of the house.”
The Schafers — only the second family to live in this residence — have maintained that spirit, as well as their relationship with the previous owners, who still live in the area. “They built this house and they wanted to make sure it gets the respect it deserves. They knew we were going to do right by it.”