After decades designing luxury hotels, Bob Olson brought his expert eye to Lido Isle, creating a 9,000-square-foot waterfront home that blends timeless architecture, personal storytelling, and hospitality-level elegance.
From creating a functional floor plan to finding optimal lighting, designing your dream home from the ground up can be daunting. For Bob Olson, it was like second nature. After decades of developing luxury hotels, Olson created his Lido Isle house with personality and luxury at the forefront of his mind.
Olson carefully considered how the house, with its breathtaking waterfront views, could be a beautiful sanctuary for himself and the ideal place to entertain.
When it came to finding the right person to bring his interior design vision to life, Olson partnered with Rona Graf, founder and principal designer of Grace Blu Interior Design. Graf, who had designed two previous projects with Olson, understood how to best pair a space’s functionality with Olson’s personal style preferences.
“She understood how I live,” he says. “I had other proposals come in, but Rona took this as if it were her own and owned it, and there was no way I could pick anyone else because she was so far ahead of the pack. She knew my lifestyle and taste, yet she pushed for some things I was pushing back on. She stood her ground, and I’m glad she did.”
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE: HOLLYWOOD HILLS HOME RENOVATION BLENDS 1930S CHARM WITH MODERN NEW ENGLAND STYLE
Graf knew she wanted to make the residence feel like a statement piece for Olson, a philanthropist with a knack for entertaining. “I really wanted to make this home a calling card for who he was, and that’s really what we do with all our residences. We want to listen to our clients, honor their personalities, and tell a story with their home,” Graf explains.
One of Olson’s primary concerns was ensuring guests felt welcome upon entering the house, similar to stepping into a beautiful hotel. “What I think about for hotels is how guests will use the space and what will draw them in. I try to evoke an emotion from the arrival experience to the guest room and the activities and things that they do. It’s very much in line with designing and building a home,” Olson explains. “Creating those emotional moments; it’s the same thing in my house when you walk in the front door. It’s a wild experience.”
Olson knew that quality lighting would add depth and dimension to the features of his home and collaborated with Robert Singer, president of Robert Singer & Associates. Singer, who had also worked with Olson on a previous project, understood that the home needed lighting that would accentuate, not distract, from the unique architecture and design of the space.
“What we did is we brought life to the architectural elements of the home, and most importantly, the art,” Singer says. “The key was making sure the home still had a warmth to it that he can entertain in and change the vibe of the spaces easily.”
The inspiration for this home was a thoughtful blend of the interior design elements of Olson’s cozy Aspen home and his former Balboa residence, which had a Nantucket twist.
“It almost became a new aesthetic for this house, which is a very modern yet traditional home, so it has the architectural elements of cozy, intimate rooms, while still being such a large property,” Graf notes. “We had to marry all of these elements together and still make it feel cohesive.”
“The home has a Nantucket vibe to it, but it is eclectic in the sense that there are architectural elements that you typically don’t see in a home like that. It is very traditional but with a twist,” Singer adds.
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE: BARCLAY BUTERA’S COASTAL OASIS
Every corner and wall of the astounding 9,000-square-foot residence reflects thoughtful design, from the custom wallpapers of Olson’s most popular hotels to a specialty bar for entertaining.
“One of the coolest features of this house is that there is no single wall surface anywhere that is not clad with some sort of material, whether it is stone, wood, wallpaper or Venetian plaster,” Graf points out.
With the project completed in a mere 15 months, Olson’s oceanside home now stands as a testament to his eye for luxe design, entertainment functionality, and, most importantly, its ability to emulate his true personality.
“It was so important to me to make sure that his personality showed through. It’s what this home represents,” Graf says. “I really wanted people to feel a sense of who Bob is when they walk into this home.”