A second chapter for Alana and Dan Mason in their North Hills home in Raleigh, designed with Hue Home Interiors.

By Hampton Williams Hofer | Photography by Catherine Nguyen

The view from Alana and Dan Mason’s sunroom is all lush green, often dotted with deer, and the lights of North Hills’ eastern tower in the distance. The scene seems more likely to belong to a mountainside escape than to the end of a cul-de-sac in the French Woods neighborhood, near the Beltline and Crabtree. The inside is similarly enticing and unexpected, as each curated room offers a unique invitation—and the Masons extend a lot of them. 

Alana and Dan met in August 2024, and by December they had found the house. It would become a representation of their fresh start rather than just a blending of their former lives. Alana knew Dan would be sold on the golf simulator in the basement, and as for the other 7,000 square feet? She had a vision. Over the years, she had collected beautiful antiques and quirky pieces alike, sentimental family heirlooms and Facebook finds — tons of art, chairs and lamps. They piled these treasures into the top-floor gym of the new home, awaiting a perfect place somewhere below. In designing the home, Alana enlisted the team at Hue Home Interiors to put together the puzzle of all of those unique pieces.

The ladies’ lounge is designed in sultry colors with a mix of heirlooms and Facebook Marketplace finds.

There’s the airy sunroom with white sheer drapes and a pale color palette, a place to start the day; but then there’s the ladies’ lounge with rich and sultry colors and textures, where wine and conversations stretch into the night. There’s the music room, filled with lively art each of the Masons have collected over the years, and then there’s the primary bedroom, decadent with its upholstery and botanicals to match the Bradford pear tree outside the window. (Alana believes every property has a tree that protects it, and this is theirs.) “I’m a deeply feeling person,” says Alana, “and this house lets me experience whatever I need.”

Alana, who recently joined Dan and business partner Jim Leonard to launch a new private wealth firm, formerly worked in banking with Cam Tims, who is now the managing director of Hue Home Interiors. “When he started his interior design business, I knew that if it was Cam doing it, it was going to be done right,” Alana says. Tim’s team, including principal designers Jennifer Alexander and Greg Clark, tackled the Masons’ home renovation project with the intention of reimagining as much as possible, since Alana already had a lot of stuff.

The Hue team set out digging through the upstairs gym. “We selected things we loved, then we got to work painting and reupholstering,” Alexander says. “Lots of pieces ended up looking nothing like they had before.” 

Alana had an ottoman reupholstered and painted blue to match her living room.

The turtle-shaped ottoman in the music room, for one: Alana found it on Facebook Marketplace, then had it painted blue and reupholstered. The seller was a woman whose husband had recently passed away: “We sat and talked for over two hours,” Alana recalls. “And every time I see that ottoman now, I’m reminded of her and the stories she told me about her husband, about how much she loved him.” Alana cares deeply for the pieces of art and furniture she’s collected, cherishing their unique histories.

The designers and Alana would often walk through the house during the project, wondering aloud what might make a room pop, and Alana would suddenly hustle up to the gym, reappearing with a painting or a vase: How about this? For the interior designers, the role was to help meld the Masons’ array of collected pieces into a cohesive, livable design. In the end, it feels curated and luxurious, but lacks that hotel vibe—it is still distinctly theirs. The Masons, who like tailored items but are playful in their approach, trusted the Hue team’s choices of bold statements, like the dragon fabric on the settee in the lounge. “Like most designers, we needed to work with a budget,” says Clark, “and the dragon fabric was a big splurge, so we built a bench backing with the extra, making sure not to waste a yard of good fabric.”

The home is a place of escape, but the Masons don’t do it alone. Someone is always over for dinner—like at last year’s Thanksgiving, which featured 30 people, including friends of family members, distant cousins, and even a few people they had never met. “If you have a space where you can invite people, it makes it so much simpler to say yes,” says Alana. “You can then focus on the relationship and not whether or not the house is clean.”

Alana was right about Dan loving the golf simulator, but he says his favorite place in the house is the music room, where he likes to settle in on the kidney-bean-shaped couch by the piano. “It’s the perfect spot to look out at all that we’ve created, at what Cam’s team did to bring together Alana’s vision. It’s incredible,” Dan says. Sometimes he’s on the piano bench, making up songs, Alana’s 12-year-old daughter singing beside him. 

Intentionality is everywhere, and every piece seems to have a story. On a table in the foyer sits Alana’s grandfather’s old KA-BAR knife from his time as a Marine: “It’s the only thing I have from him,” she says, “when I was going through a vulnerable time as a single mom, I kept it near me at all times. For protection — but also as a reminder that if you work hard enough, anything is possible.”

Upstairs, the primary bedroom features a vintage bench, fresh flowers weekly from Dan, sound bowls, and a soothing botanical feel. “Alana had a vision of her bedroom that involved tapestries,” says Alexander, “so we wanted to give the idea of that richness with the panels and layers.” Benches are a theme throughout the home, a nod to where Alana and Dan’s relationship bloomed: on the benches of Boston in their early days together. 

Nowadays, the benches might feature their 1-year-old Bernedoodle puppy. He favors the deep-red velvet sofa in the lounge, a space that became a favorite for the designers. “It feels like a back-in-time Victorian room—sultry, with a modern twist,” Alexander says. Nearby is a tall lamp shaped like a woman that belonged to Alana’s grandmother. “She had great taste,” Alana says. “I used to hold that lamp’s hand as a child, and now that it’s mine and my grandmother is gone, I remember her by it.” 

Alana feels soulfully connected to so many pieces throughout the home, valuing the chance to give them second lives. Some pieces are quirky, some are stunning, and everything seems to mean something—like the Dalmatian statue in front of the grand piano, a tribute to her first childhood dog, King, who turned the whole family “Dalmatian crazy.” Designer Clark says, “We tell people that if you’re going to reupholster or refurbish a piece, it needs to either be high quality or meaningful. It needs to be worth it.” Alana’s pieces all have one or the other. 

The Masons’ home came at a significant time of change for Alana and Dan, the beginning of a new marriage and a new business. With so much happening in their fast-moving lives, the house was a place where things could slow down. “The funny thing is, when we leave, we find ourselves wanting to come home almost immediately,” Alana says. “I think that’s when you know you’ve created something special—not just a beautiful house, but a place that restores you.”   

This article originally appeared in the November 2026 issue of WALTER Magazine.