Had the two a chance to meet, decorator Victoria Klein and wit Dorothy Parker would have got on like sugar and cinnamon. When Parker would quip, “Well, there are always those who cannot distinguish between glitter and glamour,” Klein would retort: why discriminate?

Recently, the decorator delivered a generous portion of both to the house of a young family who live just a hop-skip from her Pelham home. For the Marras, a bit of dazzle was just what the buttoned-up 1920s Colonial needed to shake things up.

While peeling away traditional elements, Klein helped homeowner Erin Marra excavate a bit of her inner style, too. One glance at the graceful entryway with shimmering oyster-colored walls, silver Art Deco chairs, and silk-shaded chandeliers and “mom of three” doesn’t spring to mind. Lana Turner, maybe. “Most of the time I’m in jeans and t-shirts,” says Marra, whose boys are aged nine, six, and one. “If you saw me on a daily basis, you wouldn’t think, wow, she’s so glamorous.” But many would argue that dressing your home in glass chandeliers and glitzy fabrics takes more a commitment to glamour than the occasional blow-out and ball gown.

“I felt like what I needed in my life and family was beauty,” says Marra. “But nothing over the top—we stopped just short of that.” You’d think they toed the line if you consulted the list of furnishings alone (Go to Resources to see what I mean). In less capable hands, iridescent fabrics, opalescent lamps, and lame throw pillows would read ‘Barbie Dream House’ not ‘glam family.’ But the home’s generous proportions and traditional bones soaked up the glitz; there’s a Bagues-style crystal overhead fixture in the butler’s pantry and it’s not at all out of place.

Klein teased out moments of grandeur in unlikely spots. The family room, suited for rough-and-tumble kids, has rock-crystal cabinet pulls. “Victoria’s very creative,” says Marra. “I would show her photographs of fixtures by Josef Hoffman and say, ‘the repros are too expensive, but I love these,’ and she’d find someone to make something just like it. With her it’s always, ‘why couldn’t we do that!’ and ‘sure, why not!’.

The front of the house also says ‘yes’ to sparkle. The stunning silver-wallpapered dining room is crowned with a waterfall chandelier of glass orbs and windows are swathed in elegant folds of transparent, featherweight wool, one of several swanky Gretchen Bellinger fabrics in the house. “It swoops and falls like a Grecian dress,” says Klein. She ought to know—she was once a dressmaker. The effect is like intentionally goddess-like, like a modern-day Hera minding her brood, Marra is the home’s sole female; she’s outnumbered 4 to 1.

Arch femininity was hardly the m.o. when the family moved in three years ago. Then, the gracious Colonial was outfitted with the traditional furniture bought for their former home, a farmhouse in Bedford. “When I first started thinking of decorating, I was thinking of other peoples’ homes, pictures in magazines, and colors like coffee and red,” Marra explains. “I took the summer off to regroup and when I came back I knew we needed to use the colors that I love and ones that I wear.”

Cue pink, purple, and metallics. In the living room, a pair of deep, George Smith sofas are covered in strie silvery grey velvet. There, the family reads, plays games, and kick up their feet on ottoman equivalent of a Chanel jacket—an oversize tailored footstool in a tweedy pink woven with Lucite legs. Nearby, diminutive chairs are covered in a brazen pink and purple stripe, and the two Chinese Art Deco carpets have hues like lavender, raspberry and peach. How did Marra’s husband respond to the color palette? “He asked for more!” says Klein. Specifically he wanted two hot-pink chairs, but Marra talked him down and they settled on the stripe. “JP is a pearl among men,” says Klein.

In the entry hall and stair landing, the curtain fabric reads just a twinge iridescent. Four black-and-white vintage portraits of a dancer in a billowing Grecian dress perfectly mimics the folds of the dining room curtains. The walls are glazed in a shimming neutral that had handfuls of glitter thrown in—a last-minute idea from Marra who was getting used to the idea of glitz. “When my mother first came to the house and saw the glitter in the paint, she turned to me and said, ‘You always were a glitter girl.’”

Photographs by Ellen McDermott