REAL ESTATE | Bring It Home

Interior designer-turned-painter Nadia Karam used artwork, furniture and other personal touches to create a Coral Gables home that’s worth talking about.

Stepping into Nadia Karam’s home isn't much different than opening a book about her life. Each piece in the home forms a line in her story, a thread that keeps the conversation going, inviting you to ask, “What’s this? Where’s it from? Tell me more.”

It’s a bold, colorful, and ever-evolving story that links her own history—she was born and raised in Morocco, studied art and design in Paris, and worked in New York and Dubai—to her husband, Antoine Karam, and their three children.

Mrs. Karam started her career as an interior designer and began painting full-time when she moved to Miami in 2004.

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Her own home offered a blank canvas to bring both artforms together, a place where artwork, furniture, and her family’s memories could be in constant conversation.

The Coral Gables house felt like part of the couple’s story before they even bought it, reminding them of Morocco. When they first visited the property, Mrs. Karam’s husband turned to her and asked, “Don’t you feel like we’re in Marrakesh?”

A view of the front entrance.

The couple bought the 12,500-square-foot home in April 2015 for $5.1 million. A $1 million renovation opened the main living spaces and eliminated heavy iron details.

“I go with the pieces, not the room,” says Mrs. Karam. “If a piece is not able to tell a story by her shape, her color, her texture, it’s not interesting to me.” The spaces are layered with different materials, styles and price points.

In the living room, a golden onyx fireplace is paired with dove gray velvet sofas, a dark oak coffee table, wingback chairs clad in sky blue leather, and a Baccarat chandelier.

To lighten the formality of the room, Mrs. Karam created a pair of large hot pink and yellow paintings, which fill the walls on either side of the fireplace.

“I wanted them to work in opposition,” she says, adding that they tell the story of a Moroccan woman who comes from a culture where sex is taboo. “Opposition makes you think. It starts a conversation.”

And just as a conversation is apt to be more vibrant and interesting when varying perspectives are brought to the table, says Mrs. Karam, so too is a room.

She’ll place an antique collection of samovar silver on a Pottery Barn console table, or pair a $50 West Elm lamp with a custom $12,000 sofa, or hang Impressionist paintings in a room filled with modern furniture.

“I don’t want to play it safe ever,” she says. “When you have different backgrounds and histories set against each other, there is a beautiful exchange in the room.”

In the family room, Mrs. Karam’s eye for mixing creates a riot of unexpected color.

A pair of mustard yellow armchairs with lavender piping sit adjacent to two azure chairs under a cobalt blue portrait she painted of a street vendor in Vietnam.

“It’s an old woman who served me spring rolls in the streets of Hanoi,” she says. It’s one of the few pieces she’s created that she will never sell.

In the dining room, she deftly blended edgy and elegant with the introduction of her abstract painting, “My Kingdom.” “It says, ‘I’m dramatic enough to be part of this room,’” says Mrs. Karam.

While color is ever-present, one of Mrs. Karam’s favorite spaces in the home is more subdued. At the end of the corridor leading to the living room, she paired a transparent Ghostfield armchair with a parchment painting that shares similar hues.

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Together, they tell a story of exposing your authentic self. “They talk perfectly to each other,” she says.

In her studio, located in the guest house, Mrs. Karam works on three to four pieces at a time, spreading the large canvases across the walls and floor. “It’s my temple,” she says.

Her process is inexact, guided by instinct. “I keep adding and removing until I get the feeling I want the art to convey.”

“In my culture, you have to be discreet. I am the opposite of that. I create large pieces, I use bold colors, I write profanities. I love to use the shocking factor to bring my pieces to life.”

In the stairway, she adds personal touches such as poster-sized mosaics she made with Polaroids she took of her children—now ages 13, 15, 16—offering glimpses of their lives throughout the years.

“You have to go with the story,” says Mrs. Karam. “Anything that doesn’t come from the heart won’t work. But when you have something to share, it’s going to be amazing.”

Additional photos shot by Mary Beth Koeth

Read More WSJ Real Estate:

How to Fill a Home With Art Without Making It Feel Like a Museum

Luxury Developers Are Curating Their Condos With In-House Artists

How to Keep Your Art Safe From Damage, Both Natural and Man-made