9 min readWhen real estate expert Harvin Greene and her family moved into their five-bedroom Atlanta home, a 1920s Tudor originally designed by Leila Ross Wilburn, she knew it would be an ongoing project with no real end date. In fact, 12 years after Greene, her husband Tommy, and their two daughters Heath and Lula (who have since graduated from and gone off to college, respectively), moved in, the family home is still a work in progress—though now on a much smaller scale. (Greene still wants to expand her current closet, giving her impressive wardrobe a bigger and better home.) The original scope, she explains, involved reconfiguring various rooms so they flowed for a more contemporary life. “Originally, there were multiple ceiling heights, a too-long-and-too-narrow living room, and a lot of awkward structural work,” she admits.
Luckily, Greene, CEO and founder of Dossier Real Estate, is an expert at making houses into homes and knew what she was doing from the start. What’s more, Greene’s mother, an interior designer, helped her develop a keen eye for a colorful, unique sense of style that suited her taste from an exceedingly early age. Now, with two daughters of her own, Greene is happy to flex her carefully curated sense of style. “Design should be both fun and an expression of the people living among it,” Greene explains. “I love color. It’s like a major dopamine hit.”
Color, in fact, is one of the driving forces behind each of Greene’s design choices. She brought on local firms Colordrunk Designs and Elixir to handle a good portion of the interior design, two institutions that share Greene’s belief that good design should elicit an upward turn of the mouth. “An artist who is proud of their craft is what really makes me smile when it comes to design. I think artists are some of the most interesting and passionate humans,” Greene notes. Her colorful space is proof that good design requires a little bit of a risk now and then—it’s never a bad idea if your goal is to live in a place that makes you happy.
Upon entering Greene’s circa 1924 Tudor, you’re immediately greeted by arguably the best space in the whole 6,000-square-foot home: the formal living room. When the home was originally built, this would have been where most social gatherings took place, but in Greene’s first few years living here, she admits the space didn’t see much action. “We added an art TV in here during the pandemic, and we use the room all the time now,” she adds.
With punchy green walls (Farrow & Ball’s Danish Lawn in a high-gloss finish), it’s a hard room to resist. “Green is one of my favorite colors, but the right green is really hard to find!” she adds. Adding pattern and more color into the equation can quickly push a room into chaos territory, but the Greenes’ formal living room feels anything but. “I credit Jenna Gross of Colordrunk with tying everything together in here,” Greene notes.
Once she had sourced the show-stopping fabric for the valance, the tone of the space was set, which made finding unique pieces a little easier. “Once we had the ‘Chinese vermillion’ accent fabric on lock, I lucked up and found this vintage coffee table at Scott’s Antique Market that was an exact color match,” Greene says. “After that, I had this wonderful artist, Vickey Sides, create the piece over my mantle in the matching color to tie it all together.” And the rest, as they say, is history.
The attention-grabbing green walls may be the first thing you notice upon stepping foot into this space, but the window treatments are what kicked off the process in here. Greene didn’t just pick them out in a fabric book and call it a day; she looked elsewhere for something extra special. “The fabric on the drapes is from my parents’ 1980s tester bed. I always loved it and had been hauling it around in an old trunk for over 20 years until I found the perfect spot for it,” she explains.
The drapes aren’t the only heirlooms that live in this space. The sofa was also an inherited piece, though its origins are a little less clear. “It was always said to be an unsigned Duncan Phyfe, but I really don’t know if that is true,” Greene admits. “It’s very traditional and not my typical style, but because it was a sentimental piece, I had it recovered to work in multiple homes.” When she ran this errand many years ago, the upholsterer informed Greene that the sofa was stuffed entirely with horse hair and old newspapers.
Luckily, Greene had a little more control over other decorative elements of the room than she did over the wonky old sofa she’s grown to love. One such addition is the set of bookshelves, which flank the fireplace and are filled with personal treasures. “The bookshelves house some of my most prized possessions. They are a curation of things that really mean something to me, and I have tried to corral it all here,” she says. Collections are a big theme in pretty much every room of Greene’s home, and this is just one display.
Unlike the living room, the family room is a bit more casual and relaxed. And that’s, quite literally, by design. Still, that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few bold moments in the space. “This palette is already everywhere in my house, and when I saw Jenna’s [Gross of Colordrunk] rug collaboration with The Loom & Co, I knew that would be the starting point,” Greene says.
Next came the Brunschwig & Fils fabric, which became a theme in the room, as it serves as the drapes and the upholstery on the lounge chairs. “Jenna presented me with several options when we began working on the space, and the colors in the Pomelo pattern were perfect for us,” Greene adds.
The family room is also home to another one of Greene’s unique collections: A wall of faux animal heads that, unlike traditional taxidermy, are playful and charming. “It all started with the plaster llama head, and then my family found and gifted me the others over the years from antique shops around the world,” Greene says. The zebra is actually a platter from the 1980s.
The platter is not the only zebra motif in the house, either. In the entryway, zebras grace the walls by way of Scalamandré wallpaper. “I love leopard and zebra prints used in appropriate ways, and this wallpaper in the entry embodies that,” Greene adds.
Every nook and cranny of Greene’s home is filled with pieces she loves because they are beautiful, come with a story, or a combination of the two. The centuries-old portrait just beside the front door is a unique example of a small piece that embodies both. “There is a funny story behind that one: My stepmother bought this portrait at an antique shop years ago, and we all used to laugh because it looked like my husband,” Greene explains. “She ended up giving it to us when she moved, so we now tell everyone that the portrait is one of Tommy’s long-lost relatives.” Jokes aside, Greene still loves the painting. “Portraits like this, I think, have spirits when they come to live in your home, and I love that. I always hate to see abandoned, old portraits and family photos at estate sales for this reason. I guess it is kind of like rescuing a lost puppy.”
Beneath the portrait lives another of Greene’s collections, a combination of inherited silver, rocks the girls found, and feathers. “We were fortunate to inherite a lot of old silver from both of our families, and honestly, when was the last time you served anything in a sterling compote dish? These pieces were ultimately stuck in cabinets for years, so I like to display them in non-traditional ways,” Greene says. As for the rest of the items, she has an affinity for what she calls “the organic nature” of crystals and feathers.
While Greene has never been a fan of the formal living room as a concept, she loves a formal dining room, and hers is far superior to most, in Greene’s opinion, because it’s at the front of the home. “I adore a formal dining room in the front of a house, as it can pack a punch with style and it typically stays pretty clean for front-door guests,” she says. Sadly, as is the case with most formal dining rooms in the year 2026, this one does not get used as often as it probably once did.
It may not be the most popular place for weeknight dinners, but that doesn’t mean Greene didn’t put any effort into its design. In fact, this is a space where she worked extra hard to make it feel lived-in and curated. “I like drama and contrast between spaces, and for a long time it was really the only non-white room in our whole house,” she says. Aside from the general moodiness of the space, Greene’s favorite pieces are the focal points: the antique table and chairs, which she bought from a former client and antiques dealer when she sold their historic home in the neighborhood. “Both a job hazard and a reward for me are when clients move into a new home and want to sell some of their furniture that won't work anymore.” In this case, it was a reward.
As is the case in most family homes, the kitchen isn’t just a utility; it’s a gathering space, and that is definitely how the Greenes use theirs. “I love for everyone to be together, and we always had dinner together as a family when the girls were at home,” she says. “I think it is important to have that family time. I love to cook, but in the last few years my husband has taken that over because of my crazy schedule.” Regardless of who is at the stove’s helm, the style is all there, and no details were overlooked. Greene even created a custom paint color to match the color of her Ilve range.
Another element Greene gravitates towards is brass; the more patina, the better. “I always knew I would want brass in my kitchen because I love the way it changes with age,” Greene says. “With fashion accessories, I am a gold girl, and I wanted to reflect that love in my home as well.” She tapped a local metalsmith to create the bar and hood in brass panels.
The kitchen, one of the biggest rooms in the home, is also chock-full of unique pieces, including the Taylor Burke counter stools. “I have had them for more than 10 years, and I actually just recovered them for the first time with a fun, vintage Jonathan Adler fabric,” Greene explains. “Before that, I had a person in Mexico make me an Otomi fabric, which I loved, but it was definitely time for a refresh.”
Another found piece that lives in the kitchen is the rug, a collection of which she hunts down at estate sales far and wide. “It can be a challenge to find the bright colors, so if I can find them, I will make room for them in our home,” she adds.
That’s actually her guiding light throughout her design process: If she happens upon something she likes, she buys it and eventually finds a place for it. After all, every collection has to start somewhere.
Perhaps the only space that is intentionally much less colorful is Greene’s bedroom, which, she admits, is a comment she’s gotten more than once. That said, it was a purposeful choice. “With the color everywhere in my home, I like to have a peaceful space at night when I am trying to settle down,” Greene notes. Originally, this space was an old sleeping porch, hence the windows, which Greene loves. “I didn't want draperies to detract from the windows, so I installed blackout shades that are the same color as the walls,” she adds. The bed, a custom shagreen piece by Elixir, is finished in the same tones as the tufted channels on the wall and built-in bedside tables. “I found the vintage bench later at Scott Antique Markets, and it matched perfectly!”
The one attention-grabber is the pair of Ogetti pendants that almost drip from the ceiling. “When they are turned on, they have a beautiful glow from the brass and plaster and feel organic in the space,” Greene notes.
