AD100 designer Hadley Wiggins infuses an Upper East Side home with a blend of warmth, history, and approachability
A dining room table and chairs by Rose Uniacke sit atop a Patterson Flynn rug. The iron chandelier is a French antique.
It can be all too easy to fall into a sea of design sameness—chasing trends and ending up with a space that looks beautiful but lacks soul. That’s far from the approach of Hadley Wiggins, the self-taught design maven and AD100 talent who is quietly making waves with her wholly original, highly textured, and delightfully hard-to-define aesthetic.
The dining room, in addition to housing a vast collection of Edwardian china, also features antique-framed hand-painted wallpaper panels by Robert Crowder and Company.
Wiggins’s latest project, a stately limestone townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, perfectly encapsulates her inimitable style. The home, inhabited by a family with two young children, required a deft hand to honor its historic bones while imbuing the space with softness, warmth, and personality.
Eighteenth-century silk and wool antique tapestries from the Nazmiyal Collection bring texture to a living room, which features vintage chairs and a vintage coffee table, as well as a custom daybed in Holland & Sherry Brunswick bouclé. Antique andirons are from RT Facts.
“When it was purchased, the house had all of its original details—moldings, windows, fireplace surrounds. But it had undergone a well-meaning yet stark renovation that felt very optic white,” Wiggins explains. “The goal was to make more nuanced choices to create contrast and visual interest without distracting from the inherent beauty of the architecture.”
A painting by American artist Clare Grill hangs between two antique chairs recovered in Castel Maison’s Olive corduroy.
The designer achieved this through an intriguing interplay of subtle tones punctuated by strategic moments of saturation. Richly hued spaces like the dining room —Wiggins’s favorite of her career thus far—serve to “compress” the home’s sprawling layout. “With a home this size, you have ample opportunity to carve out those airy, light-filled moments. Then you get to decide where you want to create coziness and intimacy,” she says.
A family dining area features a custom table by Rob Pluhowski, punctuated by a string lantern pendant by Nickey Kehoe. A banquette is covered in Lisa Fine’s Calico Floral Stripe.
The common thread that weaves the home’s diverse palette together is Wiggins’s curation of furnishings, art, and objects (achieved with the help of art advisor Kate Bellin). Each room features an eclectic mélange of pieces of various eras, styles, and provenances—a signature of the designer’s approach.
The primary bedroom’s serenity is enhanced by walls in a custom limewash color by Domingue. The painting is by American artist Cooper Cox.
“I very rarely go shopping with a specific look or piece in mind. I buy things that speak to me, and then I work to find their rightful place in space,” Wiggins says. “The goal is to strike enough diversity that you unlock yourself from strict parameters. The question becomes less about adhering to a singular aesthetic, and more about balancing tone, weight, and that intangible special something.”
In a seating nook, an antique lounge chair cozies up to a custom ottoman in Ralph Lauren Walmer Tweed. The wallpaper is Ramayana in sage, from GP&J Baker, while the Roman shades are made of Islay Lovat by Lee Jofa.
This method lends the home a collected quality—each piece feels like a treasured find the homeowners have amassed over a lifetime. Standouts include the living room’s antique tapestry, which serves as a Rosetta stone of sorts for the space, an oil painting that acts as its perfect foil, and an array of lighting that spans the style spectrum.
A library brings the gravitas with walls painted in Benjamin Moore’s earthy Nicolson Red. The large cabinet—original to the home—is complemented by a vintage floor lamp, as well as a vintage chandelier designed by Josef Frank for J.T. Kalmar.
Equally impressive is Wiggins’s facility with pattern and texture, honed during her years at Ralph Lauren. “Incorporating pattern is never easy—in an average room you may need to make five key fabric choices, and every single one needs to tick a host of boxes in terms of design, durability, and client approval. It’s an immense puzzle, but the payoff is so worth it,” she says.
Pierre Frey’s Au Bord Du Lac—wallpaper that takes inspiration from 17th- and 18th-century tapestries—brings a little bit of the forest into a home office. A vintage desk lamp from Montage Antiques sits on the desk.
This approach extends to even the most functional of spaces, as evidenced by the home’s powder room. Anchored by a striking custom wood vanity and matching toilet seat, the moody, cocoon-like space proves Wiggins’s theory that a powder room “is not about function; it’s about feeling incredible.”
In this space, the walls and cabinetry are painted in Benjamin Moore’s Rainy Afternoon. The faucet is by Barber Wilsons.
And while the home’s exquisite detailing and bespoke elements are certainly incredible, Wiggins never loses sight of the fact that this is first and foremost a family home. “I’m not doing my job if I create a museum. The beauty of this space is that it can handle the ‘oopsies’ of life. It can evolve, it can wear, and it will only get better over time,” she muses.
An ancillary bedroom showcases a custom bed in Holland & Sherry’s Sloan Sq. The side table ceramic lamps with Brick knurl linen shades are by artist Rebekah Miles, from Nickey Kehoe.
It’s this unique alchemy—the push-pull between elegance and approachability, history and modernity, specificity, and serendipity—that marks Wiggins’s work. She adds, “I spend a lot of time looking for pieces that are beautiful because they are old and worn. That spirit of imperfect perfection is something I strive for in every space.”
Upholstered walls, a custom bed, and lampshades in Pierre Frey’s Montbazon define another sleeping space.
