To know GreenRose Fine Homes is to know their catch phrase: “Love where you live!”
The award-winning design-build firm in Chester founded by Ken Malian and Steve Moran has been helping homeowners create, renovate and design their homes for 14 years.
In 2009, Malian and Moran launched GreenRose Enterprises, which purchased, renovated and flipped houses. As demand increased for their design and general contracting work, they expanded the business, which serves clients within about a 45-minutes radius from their location, as well as Jersey Shore homes.
Today, the company—which has won numerous awards for interior design and service from Houzz, Qualified Remodeler and Chrysalis—employs professional designers and works with architects who then together approach the process in a concierge-like way by understanding how clients live. In addition, Moran, also a licensed Realtor with Turpin Realtors, can work with clients who wish to buy or sell a home and guide them with their staging needs.
“If you simply give people what they are asking for, you are not a designer; you are an order-taker,” says Moran. “Great designers solve problems for their clients. We get inside our clients’ heads and learn how to articulate their thoughts through design. Our job is to make clients’ homes and their spaces a reflection of their personalities. We’re always looking for ways to merge form, function and style by procuring and curating unique pieces, fixtures and appliances that go beyond what is found in big box stores and customized to their individual style.”
Color, when used purposefully, can effect great change in a room, says Moran, who is GreenRose’s lead designer and project site manager. “Dark colors recede away from you; light colors advance toward you. So, for example, if a client feels that the ceilings are too low, we will paint the ceilings with a darker color to visually lift the ceiling. If you paint a small room a darker color, it will give it a greater sense of depth,” he says. “Consider landscape fencing around a pool: You will see right through a black fence out to the scenery beyond while a white fence will pop up right in front of your face.”
The Pantone 2023 Color of the Year is Viva Magenta, a bold, empowering pink. “We will see lots of jewel tones in the coming year: rich vivid indigo blues, jade greens, vibrant oranges, purples and pinks in all shades,” Moran says. “These colors are great for accent walls balanced with one of the many shades of white available. Many people aren’t aware that there are 1,000-plus shades of white. The jewel tone draws the eye, so pairing it with the right white is important to provide the statement you wish to make and what feature you’re looking to accentuate. There is a big difference between a color sample and how the color looks on the wall. With our color coordinating expertise, we provide guidance for any color questions.”
Wallpaper is also having a resurgence—but with a twist. “We like to use three-dimensional textured wallpapers that give a more interesting and updated look that often makes the room feel more spacious. Today’s wallpapers are not what you remember at Grandma’s house,” Malian says. “There’s a wonderful variety in new wallpaper designs that are traditional, whimsical, modern or totally abstract. Wallpaper is huge today.”
Malian says natural materials like stone, marble and wood always have been popular. Satin and matte finishes on wooden floors—a modern look that surpasses the more dated semi-gloss floors, are popular as well. Some finishes, however, never go out of style. “Stainless-steel appliances have been fashionable since at least the 1980s,” he notes.
Moran is seeing a surge in the “Romantic Modernism” style, which espouses a comfy, cozy and romantic but more modern aesthetic. “As an example, we have designed and built a marble contemporary bathroom and paired it with a piece of French traditional furniture as an accent,” he says. “A key to good design is to give the room a layered look that does not always necessitate going to a store to buy furniture. We use pieces the client has collected over years and pull them together in a cohesive way.”
“We design and build in a way that reflects the client’s personality and suggest amenities we know our clients would like,” Malian says. For example, they have placed laundry rooms within master closets, built curb-less showers with linear drains, included niches in the shower to hold shampoo bottles, have installed sound systems throughout houses and selected cabinets that maximize storage.
They emphasize that they like to have fun with their clients. “Laughter is very important, and we’re delighted that many clients have become friends,” Malian says.
View the looks at GreenRoseEnt.com.
“We will see lots of jewel tones in the coming year: rich vivid indigo blues, jade greens, vibrant oranges, purples and pinks in all shades.”
—Steve Moran