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“Timeless and Sustainable”
Southern Living
Showcase Home 2025:
Dana Bacher Design
Garden State Tile was honored to collaborate with Dana Bacher Design on the 2025 Southern Living Custom Builder Program Showcase Home in Habersham, South Carolina, an award-winning waterside community known for its scenic beauty and charming Lowcountry architecture.
This multigenerational home features finishes from Garden State Tile in seven thoughtfully curated spaces, from bold powder rooms to cozy coastal bathrooms. Garden State Tile’s Co-President Chris Fischer visited with designer Dana Bacher in Habersham to chat about this special project that she and her family now call home.
The Designer:
Dana Bacher Design
Situated just a few miles away from downtown Beaufort, South Carolina, Habersham is a historically inspired “New Urbanism” community known for the classical detailing and proportion that embodies the charm of the coastal South. Visitors who make their way to the marketplace section of town will soon
discover the elegant blue facade of Dana Bacher Design.
Owned by designer Dana Bacher, this boutique studio specializes in kitchen and bath projects, offering custom cabinetry and design/project coordination services.
Bacher first collaborated with the team at Garden State Tile as lead designer on several award-winning projects in Pennsylvania, from extensive, large-scale kitchen remodels to bathroom makeovers. In 2021, she decided to hang up her own shingle in town, and her studio has expanded to six employees over the course of four years. “The studio started with just me, and I hit the ground running,” she says. Launching during Covid, a time when “everybody was sitting around staring at their kitchens and hating on them”—kept Bacher and her team busy. “And we’ve been working non-stop since then.”
The Property:
The village of Habersham has influenced many aspects of Dana Bacher Design, especially the Lowcountry style—an elevated aesthetic with a formal history distinct to the coastal regions of South Carolina and Georgia. Described by Bacher as “timeless and sustainable”, the style is influenced by the historic homes in the community, many constructed in the 1800s. “Many of our clients like to have this style reflected in their design,” says Bacher.
Dana Bacher Design’s involvement with the showcase home began when Allen Patterson, president and founder of Allen Patterson Builders in Beaufort, reached out and asked if they were interested in designing a spec home he was building on Habersham Island. Patterson has deep ties to the community himself, with family tracing its roots in the area to the early 1700s.
Back in 2019, Bacher built a vacation home in Habersham with the intention of continuing to work in Pennsylvania but decided to make the area her permanent home when the pandemic struck. Her husband, Ken, was still working in Pennsylvania while Bacher was running her new design business in South Carolina. After five long years of living in different states, Ken retired, and they opted to put a more permanent stake in Habersham and build a larger, waterfront home. They reached out to a local architect, Eric Moser, and with his help, designed the 3,100-square-foot home for Allen Patterson to build that became the Southern Living Showcase Home.
The Design:
Located on a 6,000-square-foot lot, the multigenerational house was completed in summer 2025 and is home to Bacher, her husband, and her 85-year-old mother. In addition, Bacher’s young adult daughter comes to visit them, “so we always wanted the goal to be welcoming and inviting for her as well,” says Bacher. There are three bedrooms total, each with its own full bath. A powder room serves as the home’s fourth full bath.
The concept was to create two fully realized living areas, giving each family member their own personal space. “It was almost like having two primary suites,” says Bacher. “That was the big architectural goal.” Also critical was balancing style and function in the multi-generational design.
Accessible features for her elderly mother, who can’t climb stairs—including an elevator, grab bars, a shower bench, and a remote-controlled closet rod—were a few helpful ways to keep the space safe and comfortable. “It can be functional, but functional doesn’t have to be ugly,” says Bacher. “Functional can still be beautiful.”
That harmony extended to her mother’s blue and white bathroom, where Bacher selected tiles from Garden State Tile’s Fancy Stone Collection for the main floor and hexagonal tiles with a non-slip benefit for the shower floor. “It’s a good surface for her to walk on,” says Bacher, “and it’s so pretty.”
“It’s nice to add texture in kitchens, and we were wondering how to do that.
There needed to be another layer of something, and the answer was tile.”
Dana Bacher
One challenge in the process was the archway in the kitchen leading into the scullery, says Bacher, who wanted a way to connect those spaces without relying on paint or drywall. “It’s nice to add texture in kitchens, and we were wondering how to do that,” she says. She selected 1’’ x 1.5’’ honed Calacatta Gold mosaic with a Frosty grout. “It may be unusual, but it successfully connected the spaces,” she says.
For her primary bathroom, Bacher created a more classic look with molding with Sweet White Marble Ogee trim, which helped her achieve the elevated shower space she desired. Tiles from the Sweet White collection are used throughout the space, accompanied by dark cabinetry, golden fixtures, a shower bench, and arboreal patterned wallpaper. Bacher used a fair amount of trim work in the house, a historical reference to the Lowcountry style.
For the powder room, the designer favored a dark and moody aesthetic with full color saturation and golden fixtures. “What made it work well was the Sweet White Marble tile,” says Bacher, which was laid on the tub walls in a horizontal straight stack pattern. “If you use those materials…you can go into a darker space and really make it work because it won’t feel as dark. You’ll get that lightness from those stone materials.”
A flower petal motif in their daughter’s bathroom is reinforced with the choice of floral wallpaper, a flower-shaped cutout around the cabinetry drawer pulls, and Miramar mosaic tile in a peaceful Salt Marsh color on the shower back wall. “We did that beautiful, raised, three-dimensional tile on that back shower wall. I’ve been calling it a petal,” she says. “The color is just so beautiful.”
The Partnership:
Talent & Expertise
Collaborating with suppliers with a reliable and responsive sales team enhanced the design process for Bacher. “Garden State Tile is really into collaboration with clients and partners, and it provides a more fun experience and better results,” she says. Bacher worked alongside Garden State Tile Savannah’s Design Sales Consultant, Katie Wood, to find the perfect finishes for the project. “It was truly a pleasure collaborating with Dana and her team,” says Wood. “Together we were able to thoughtfully select materials that elevated the aesthetic of this home, but also reflected the way Dana designs real, livable beauty.” The feeling was mutual for her client. “We had so much fun exploring the design and picking out the tiles,” says Bacher. “I love to work that way.”
In addition to being a beautiful and accessible multigenerational home, the project serves as a good showcase for her business, and Bacher encourages clients to come by and take a look.
The traditional Moroccan Zellige tile used in the outdoor kitchen space has been especially popular with clients. “I think I have now sold that tile to three other clients who had seen that outdoor space and now they’re using that for their fireplaces or their kitchen wall,” says Bacher.
While focusing on accessibility, Bacher was also mindful of spaces where the family could all spend time together, have dinner, and enjoy the view outside. In the end, the design exceeded Bacher’s vision of a beautiful and accessible home for the entire family with a strong connection to their historic waterside town. “I wanted to be able to nod to that formality, but I also wanted the house to feel easy and comfortable,” says Bacher. “And to me, those beautiful materials help to do that.
Garden State Tile’s Co-President Chris Fischer says the company takes great pride in helping Bacher achieve these goals. “From the very beginning, our passion has been to serve as a trusted resource for inspiration, product knowledge, and creative solutions for all things tile,” says Fischer. “Partnering with incredibly talented design studios like Dana Bacher Design allows us to work together to bring these visions to life and make every project truly exceptional.”
The Sources & Materials
Garden State Tile
Tiles for four full bathrooms, laundry room, scullery, kitchen, hearth, and outdoor spaces.
gstile.com
Client: Dana Bacher
Builder: Allen Patterson Builders allenpattersonbuilders.com
Architect: Moser Kelly Design Group mkdga.com
Interior Designer: Dana Bacher Design danabacherdesign.com
Mother’s Bath Main Floor
FANCY STONE COLLECTION
The Fancy Stone collection of hand-selected, premium-quality marble, glass, and mother-of-pearl mosaics and water-jet tiles can be arranged in elegant patterns for walls, select floor applications, and more. The third full bathroom floor features an 11.42’’ x 11.42’’ square polished tile with a large blue dot and Frosty grout.
Mother’s Bath Shower Wall
SWEET WHITE MARBLE TILE
These 12’’ x 24’’ honed marble tiles are laid on the shower walls in a horizontal straight stack with Frosty grout.
Mother’s Bath Shower Floor
BLUE CELESTE SELECT
MOSAIC
The shower floor has elongated blue, white, and gray hexagonal tiles with Frosty grout.
Scullery Floor
CALACATTA VIDA + VOLPE
A checkerboard pattern on the diagonal was created with Calacatta Vida 12’’ x 12’’ tumbled tiles and Volpe 12’’ x 12’’ tumbled tiles with grout in Mink for the scullery floor.
Scullery Archway
CALACATTA GOLD
The scullery archway features 1’’ x 1.5’’ honed Calacatta Gold mosaic with a Frosty grout.
Laundry Floor
COLOR BLOX 2.0
Color Blox 2.0 Sea Otter unpolished 12’’ x 12’’ porcelain tiles were selected for the laundry room floor and installed in a straight stack pattern with a Smoke Grey grout.
Primary Bathroom
SWEET WHITE MARBLE
For the shower wall, Sweet White honed 3’’ x 12’’ tiles in an offset pattern, 12’’ x 24’’ honed tile was laid on the bathroom’s main floor, and 2.75″ x 2.75’’ hexagon mosaic for the shower floor.
Powder Room
ELLINGTON COLLECTION
A modern take on the Art Deco style. Measuring 5.25’’x 4.5’’, these hexagonal tiles were specified in a Cotton/Brass honed finish with a Bright White grout.
Daughter’s Shower
MIRAMAR
White 2’’x 8’’ rectangular and Salt Marsh petal mosaic ceramic tiles were selected for the shower walls for a playful botanical touch.
Daughter’s Bathroom
BIANCO CARRARA MARBLE
White Carrara 12’’x12’’ and 2″ x 2″ mosaic marble tile was installed with Bright White grout. Mined from Italian quarries, this timeless white veined marble tile is extremely versatile.
Outdoor Kitchen Floor
PORTUGAL
Installed in a 1/3 offset pattern, these 24’’x 24’’ tiles were inspired by Portuguese Atlantic Dark limestone and feature a Tinta Negra exterior finish with a Hemp colored grout.
Outdoor Fireplace
ZEL DESERT WHITE
Selected for the outdoor kitchen backsplash and fireplace face, the Zel Desert 4’’ x 4’’ handmade tiles come in a glossy White Classic color with Frosty colored grout.
