Coastal Grandma Takes a Trip to Boca

Welcome to Beach Week, our annual celebration of the best place on Earth.  

Much has been made in recent years of "coastal grandmother"—a neutral, breezy, beachy aesthetic that draws heavily on Ina Garten, Nancy Meyers movies, and Cape Cod’s entire deal. It’s beige, it’s blue, it’s unobjectionable (if not a bit conservative). But there’s another way to interpret the idea of the beach-adjacent grandma, and for that, look to Golden Girls; Think less Nantucket, a bit more Boca, with occasional midcentury flavor in the architecture and style of the home itself. Picture palm leaves, bright colors, and shell decor.

Achieving this look without veering too far into kitschy territory can be tricky. So we turned to the experts: two dedicated thrifters based out of South Florida, who regularly comb through donations made by Blanche and the girls’ exact demo. "It’s old Florida style with a modern twist—or, we call it, Palm Beach chic," says Ambie Hay, who scouts for clients and shares her finds on Instagram via @palmbeachthrifters. Here’s what to look for if you want to bring the beach—not Hyannisport, but South Beach—inside.

Know your materials

Perhaps the single most effective move you can make in the direction of this vibe is being specific about what the furniture and accent pieces are made out of. "I would say Golden Girls style is really about materials—rattan, bamboo, pencil reed," says Virginia Chamlee, author of the book Big Thrift Energy, who writes a newsletter about shopping and styling for vintage. Similarly, Hay explains that she "always looks for vintage 1970s Thomasville faux bamboo furniture." She likes to then lacquer it, choosing a color based on the overall look she's going for. "It’s really trending right now, it’s getting harder and harder to find," she says. "And that, to me, is vintage Florida."

Hay is always on the lookout for a wicker peacock chair, too: "Everybody looks fabulous sitting in those chairs."

But Chamlee warns that when shopping for these types of vintage pieces, you need to be careful to check what you’re getting, because materials like cane, wicker, and bamboo can be surprisingly delicate. "You really want to make sure the piece is functional," she says. "If it does have a cushion, lift that cushion up and look underneath." Make no mistake—wrecked caning is not an easy weekend project. Often it requires a total rebuild by a professional.

Lean into the color scheme

You have some choices to make because there's a pretty broad array of colors to choose from. You can go brightly retro—1960s, with NASA flinging rockets into space just up the coast and colors getting louder and louder every year, veering aqua and tangerine and golden yellow and hot pink—or you could opt for the more muted ‘80s spin that you’ll see on Golden Girls itself, with plenty of tans, dusty pinks, and near-mint greens.

And while a rattan chair with a crumbling cane bottom is likely to be a total headache, these pieces are ripe for another type of revitalization: "I love an upholstery project, especially if you can get a piece for super cheap," says Chamlee. As far as upholstery projects go, smaller scale endeavors like a chair with a cushion that’s musty or downright ugly are generally more affordable. "Essentially you’re just reupholstering a pillow—a really long seat cushion," Chamlee says. "It’s not like a couch that has curves and arms and things."

Reupholstering also offers a way to modernize your finds and splurge on a fabric that you love but absolutely cannot afford for larger scale projects. If the full palm leaf is just too kitschy for you, there’s always the option of replacing it with a cheery cabana stripe, as Hay suggests; Chamlee offers up checkerboard, a grid pattern, or even a more over-the-top glam option. You could even just go for some sort of neutral.

A statement piece, as a treat

From there, feel free to follow your heart to your absolute wildest beach-adjacent desires: wicker chandeliers, vintage botanical and Audubon prints, blue-and-white ceramic planters, shell-encrusted mirrors, and every possible tropical plant you can keep alive. And don’t be afraid to mix materials for the larger, more substantial pieces, too. Hay is particularly partial to lucite: "I love lucite, chunky lucite coffee tables or side tables or lucite lamps, because it elevates the look and it mixes in well with the faux bamboo, that retro look."

Chamlee points out that in Golden Girls, for instance, Blanche’s room is dizzyingly arrayed in enough palm leaves for a small South Pacific island.  "Anything with a palm leaf is very South Florida to me," she adds, also noting Blanche's dusty pink shell-shaped accent chair. You could also feature just a little nod to the style: "a pair of shell sconces, one shell accent chair, like the one in Blanche’s room, and then keep everything else modern." Throwing in one over-the-top statement piece, like a Lily Pulitzer patterned waterfall bench or a shell-encrusted mirror, in a room that is otherwise quietly furnished, nods to the aesthetic without hitting you (or your guests) over the head.

And if you want to balance out your wilder choices with textiles rather than furniture, Hay points out that you can dial up the neutral, natural fibers, with more driftwood and jute and sisal. "It’s all about mixing and matching and having fun," she says.

Do a little research & be prepared to wait

The hard part of decorating with thrift finds is, of course, finding them in the first place. One of the keys to success is having a sense of what you’re looking for before you walk in the door. Some of the designers that Chamlee and Hay recommend include Ficks Reed, McGuire, Paul Frankl, Mario Lopez, and Gabriella Crespi.

Chamlee also recommends doing a little preliminary research on sites like Chairish and 1st Dibs, familiarizing yourself with the labels and styles you might encounter, without the clutter: "Just see what it looks like as product images on a white background," she says. "So you can recall 'okay, I know what this actually looks like when there’s not piles of clothes and an old TV on top of it.'" Both of them recommend furniture-focused stores like Habitat for Humanity ReStores.

Your best bet is to shop in the places you want to evoke: "Obviously there are parts of the country where you’re just going to find a lot more rattan and wicker and bamboo," South Florida obviously being one of them, Chamlee admits. If you’re shopping on vacation, she recommends using the app YouShip.

But that doesn’t mean you have to get in the car and start driving to West Palm Beach, either: "Any thrift store can be great if you go enough," says Chamlee. Hay has been known to hit a thrift store twice in the same trip, in case the truck has rolled up with new merch in the meantime. Ultimately, it requires patience and a certain level of dedication—but that describes most things in life worth having.

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