An interior designer’s laboratory

Ana Cvetkovic’s South Philadelphia rowhouse is her personal canvas for colorful, bold, eclectic interior design. Bright green and mauve wall colors, cheerful pattern-rich wallpaper, and sentimental artwork and knickknacks fill the 1,700-square-foot, three-story home.

“I realized I hit the jackpot,” said Cvetkovic, founder of Rowhome Design, who moved into the house in October 2022. “The house was in budget, in a great location, with four bedrooms that were actually large enough to fit a bed. And I didn’t have to do any renovations.”

She immediately got to work putting her personal stamp on it.

“My design style is colorful, eclectic, fun, and maybe a little girlie,” she said. “I love classic stripes and florals, and cottagecore design.”

Cvetkovic uses her house as a lab for experimenting with design ideas she can then present to her clients, many who live in city rowhouses where space is at a premium.

“A lot of times you have awkward spaces in houses that were built more than 100 years ago,” she said.

Built circa 1915, Cvetkovic’s home is typical of rowhouses sandwiched between two others, where light comes in only through the front and back. She leaned into the cozy darkness in the dining room, using a deep green beadboard, saturated colorful floral wallpaper called Hollyhocks by House of Hackney, and a butter yellow ceiling.

“I don’t use the dining room much, so why not go wild with the colors and patterns,” she said. “I wanted to tackle it like a restaurant design project. Maybe it will make me want to cook more and spend more time in the dining room having dinner parties.”

The living room is where she hangs out with her friends or watches TV. Her television is a frame TV, which looks like a painting when turned off. It’s centered on a gallery wall, surrounded by meaningful artwork. One of her favorites is the Picasso poster — more for its backstory than its design.

“It’s advertising an exhibition at the Albertina art museum in Vienna,” she recalled. “I was there with my mom and sister 14 years ago, and these posters were plastered all over the city. My mom decided to pull one down and take it as a souvenir. That was a fun trip and is a special piece on the wall.”

On a table below the artwork sits a red rotary telephone. Born in Belgrade, Serbia, where she lived until she was 4, Cvetkovic would spend summers with her sister and grandmother there, where they had a red rotary phone.

“That apartment was like a ’70s time capsule,” she recalled. “I found the exact same model on Etsy from a seller in Macedonia.”

Cvetkovic’s office features a bookshelf and moldings painted Glade Green by Sherwin Williams, a bright and energizing color inspired by the color of the front door when she moved in.

The chandeliers in both the office and dining room came from Facebook Marketplace. The three-tiered vintage dining room Tronchi chandelier pays homage to the one from her Belgrade apartment made of Murano glass. She invested $350 and a four-hour round-trip drive to North Jersey to get it.

“When I met up with the seller in the Shop Rite parking lot, he said he had a similar one that he’d throw in for another $150,” she recalled. “That’s the one I have in my office. Those were my proudest Facebook Marketplace purchases because they were steals.”

“I’m in my 30s now, and I have a pink bedroom that I’m sure I would have loved when I was 8 years old,” she said. “To me that pink is a neutral.”

The home’s entryway features a row of stadium seats she got from the vintage store Jinxed. Despite extensive research, she couldn’t find their origins, but she likes that they look cool. That’s where she sits to put on her shoes before heading out for a neighborhood stroll.

“I love the neighborhood — all the great restaurants and boutiques,” she said. “It’s a lovely place where people know each other.”

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