When Suzanne Tucker was approached by longtime clients about creating a family getaway at Yellowstone Club, the private ski and golf community in Big Sky, Montana, her immediate response was, “I love doing mountain houses!” Indeed they suit her: The San Francisco–based designer is well-known for creating interiors with evocative visual and textural layers that make brilliant use of natural materials and light, both of which are in high supply in the open, elevated terrain of the American West. And her clients made clear they wanted copious amounts of both.
The couple were looking to build a home that would speak to mountain living but in a contemporary way, more refined than rustic, says Tucker, who heads the firm Tucker & Marks with her husband and business partner, Timothy Marks. She explains that they wanted something that “would feel warm and cozy and yet be open to the environment,” with vast expanses of glass for taking in all that Rocky Mountain majesty. The property they acquired encompasses 40 alpine acres, where the former owner, cycling legend Greg LeMond, had constructed a series of traditional log cabins the couple refreshed as guest quarters. For the new main house, they turned to Montana-based architect Reid Smith, whose firm has designed the golf clubhouse as well as some two dozen homes for members. He helped choose a site that’s nestled into a slope, overlooking a small pond, out of sight from the guest cabins, and largely hidden from the road. It also enjoys unimpeded southern light and vistas down to the valley below.
“The house has an extraordinary amount of privacy and solitude, surrounded by pines and firs,” says Tucker. “You want to go for a hike, you just step out the door and keep walking.”
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Because of the way it’s embedded into the hillside, the home projects more modestly than its nearly 11,000-square-foot dimensions might suggest. Only the upper level, containing the entertaining spaces and the primary suite, is visible from the entry side. The bedrooms for both kids (now teenagers) and two guest rooms are on the lower level. With essentially all the natural light coming from the downslope exposure, Smith designed the spaces with high ceilings and walls of glass on that facade, an approach most dramatically realized in the great room, where the soaring, angled roof plane “reaches up and out, scooping light in,” the architect says. At the same time, given the sun’s low angle, strikingly deep roof overhangs extend out nearly 20 feet beyond the great room helping to limit direct light.
When it came to material choices, Smith says the clients “were looking for textures associated with mountain living but in a softer, lighter palette than you find in some homes, where there’s just a heaviness to them, largely due to the stone.” For the exterior and many interior walls, Smith and Tucker settled on an atypical Desert Blonde sandstone from Utah. Chopped into pieces of varying dimensions and coloration, it creates a textured, almost mosaiclike effect, radiating “beautiful russet, ochre, and coppery tones,” says Tucker, noting the ceilings are clad in complementary planks of warm cedar.
Tour This Mountain Home Designed by Suzanne Tucker
The home’s elevated take on mountain living is apparent right from the entry, where visitors are greeted by an iron bench cushioned in buttery leather beneath a carved and painted panel by South African artist Lucky Sibiya. In the adjacent great room is a coffee table Tucker improvised by perching one of the largest known slabs of petrified sequoia wood, measuring eight feet across, atop a pair of biomorphic hammered brass bases. Around the table custom seating is upholstered in sumptuous chenille, cotton, and other woven fabrics.
Natural materials and rich, earthy tones that nod to the landscape are deployed throughout, minus any of the traditional western decorating clichés. “It’s woods, it’s stones, it’s iron materials, it’s skins and hides, but you take all of those elements and mix them up differently so that they come out in a more contemporary way,” says Tucker, who worked closely with her senior designer Amanda Ahlgren. “We kept the Rocky Mountain spirit but gave it a new vibe.” The effect is enhanced by a worldly selection of art and decorative objects that ranges from a 1920s Tibetan painted cabinet to luminous fresco on linen color field abstractions by Marcia Myers.
The layout is tailored for flexible living and entertaining, with spaces easily adapted for hosting “or cocooning yourself in,” says Tucker. An inviting terrace with a fireplace can be enclosed, screened off, or left open, depending on the season. In addition to the proper dining area—where a Simone Crestani lighting fixture composed of glass fir-tree forms sparkles above the walnut-top table—the kitchen and family area offers multiple spots for more casual eating and relaxing.
The primary suite is situated at the end of the main floor farthest from the entrance. The bedroom’s pale terra-cotta hues are echoed in the adjoining bath, which is clad in onyx with exquisite striations Tucker likens to the walls of the Grand Canyon, radiating “this incredibly beautiful earthen quality.”
Even with a wall of windows, the bath enjoys total privacy, thanks to the way Smith designed the house in an angular C shape, rotating the outer wings inward, creating unique views for each space. “If you put your face against the glass and look laterally, you don’t feel the presence of the rest of the home.”
After a day spent bombing down Yellowstone Club’s 2,900 acres of slopes, it’s easy to imagine the appeal of the onyx- bordered tub for an après-ski soak. Perhaps with a drink in hand and those dusky mountain views all to yourself.
Find this project and more in Suzanne Tucker’s new book, Extraordinary Interiors (Monacelli Press, 2022), released in October.
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Featured in our November/December 2022 issue. Interior Design by Suzanne Tucker; Architecture by Reid Smith; Photography by Roger Davies; Written by Stephen Wallis
