Painter and gallery owner Nancy McClure filled her Atlantic Beach vacation home with blues and whites to evoke the surrounding landscape.
by Ayn-Monique Klahre | photography by Catherine Nguyen

For over 25 years, Raleigh gallery owner and painter Nancy McClure and her family spent summers in Atlantic Beach. And about 20 years ago, they found their own beach house — a classic build with knotty pine walls and ceilings on a quiet, dead-end road. “It was adorable, but our friends would laugh when they’d come over and see the size of our kitchen,” says Nancy. “Still, we made some unbelievable meals!”

But as Nancy and Jeff’s kids Lacy and Trey grew up — and added significant others and grandkids to the mix — the home started to show its age. “My husband is really good at fixing things, but soon we found we were putting Band-Aids on the house every weekend,” Nancy says. So a couple years ago, they made the tough decision to bulldoze and build fresh. “It was very emotional,” she says.

With her art and design background, Nancy got to work planning her dream home. “In my mind, I’d been designing for years — I had a giant spiral notebook full of photos and tears from magazines,” she says. “I knew exactly what I wanted.” She drew the plans herself, then worked with an architect to make sure the home was structurally sound. “You know, make sure we had load-bearing walls, figure out the plumbing, that sort of thing,” she says. Then she enlisted her longtime friend, interior designer Liles Dunnigan, to help navigate finishes, fixtures and furniture. “Liles guided me all the way through,” Nancy says.

“She’d done a lot of research and had thought about it forever, so she had a good sense of what she wanted,” says Dunnigan. The new home is three stories tall, with the kitchen and family areas on the top floor and bedrooms on the first and second floors. “It’s sort of a reverse floor plan,” says Dunnigan, “but they wanted to capture that 360-degree view — from the top floor, you can see both the sound and the ocean.” On the ocean-facing side, the second and third floors have generous balconies to take in the view, as well.

The top floor is mostly open-plan, encompassing the dining area, large living area and kitchen. “I knew I wanted space for entertaining,” Nancy says. “Though the walk-in pantry might be one of my favorite rooms — it holds all the things I don’t want to look at.” The living area is designed in two parts, with a pair of sofas and chairs arranged around a mantel on one end and a more intimate seating area on the other. “You can sit and have a conversation, or spin around to watch football in the family room,” Dunnigan says.

For the middle level, Nancy designed a foyer to serve as the formal entrance to the home, since it’s accessed from a set of stairs outside. The star of the foyer may be the knotty pine ceiling, which Jeff salvaged from their old house. “It was super labor-intensive, but it adds a lot of character to this home,” says Dunnigan. This floor also includes three bedrooms and an office, which is currently serving as their youngest grandchild’s room.

The lowest level includes two guest rooms, a laundry room and Nancy’s studio. The area under the deck is partially enclosed by privacy walls that let in tons of light. “I didn’t want people to watch me while I paint!” she says. The ground floor often serves as an temporary gallery, a place to hang her oil paintings as they dry.

Throughout the home, art takes center stage. Its walls are filled with original art from local painters like James Kerr, Steven Moore, Trip Park and Susan Hecht — not to mention many of Nancy’s own pieces. “When I designed the home, I specifically made art walls in every room. I knew where the art was going and worked with the electrician to make sure the outlets would not be in the way,” Nancy says.

The color palette of the home, too, was designed in line with Nancy’s artistic style: lots of greens and blues, just like her paintings, but in muted tones to not distract from what’s hanging on the walls. “I wanted the home to feel light, airy and open,” she says. “But I also wanted the art to really pop.” It all harmonizes like a well-done landscape painting, with a balanced composition and color scheme, and the attention to detail that brings it to life. “So often in decorating, the art is the last thing homeowners think about, but Nancy comes at decorating with an artistic point of view,” says Dunnigan. “Art is very important here — it’s not an afterthought.”  

This article originally appeared in the August 2025 issue of WALTER magazine.