RANCH REWIND
By Maria Masters; Photography by Laura Sumrak
This article appeared in the November/December 2025 issue of Home Design & Decor’s Charlotte edition.
Modern meets vintage in designer Hill Rondero’s midcentury ranch.
When Hill Rondero first spotted the one-story ranch in Charlotte’s secluded Cloisters neighborhood in 2021, she knew she’d found not only her next project, but also her new home.
The midcentury-style house, which sat on a generous plot of land, hadn’t been updated since it was built in 1956, but that only made the property more appealing to the designer. “I love renovating, even more than building from scratch,” says Rondero, founder of Ro House Studio. “You don’t just have a box to work with. You have all these interesting spaces that you need to put together like a puzzle.” Renovating the home also gave Rondero an opportunity to challenge herself creatively. “You treat yourself differently than you would a client,” she says. “You take more risks. It’s like a test kitchen for a chef—you’re able to push yourself.”
Rondero especially wanted to play with the juxtaposition of understated and dramatic. She left the ranch’s original stone facade, but added an addition with a stucco exterior to the back of the home. “We blended the styles together, and it paid off,” she says. The addition not only accommodated Rondero’s family of five, but it also complemented the home’s existing architecture. “The house made a U-shape around the back terrace, just like you would find in a midcentury ranch,” she says. “We kept that shape, but expanded it even more, which gave us a thirty-foot terrace.”
She also balanced the old with the new in the interiors, keeping the home’s original hardwood floors and two existing fireplaces, but adding vaulted ceilings and gutting the interiors to allow for more sight lines between the kitchen and living room. “It’s a very unassuming ranch from the front,” she says, “but when you enter, the ceilings are fourteen-feet tall, and they open up to the main living spaces.”
Throughout the home, Rondero implemented her signature vintage-inspired design style, using a palette of textured neutrals accented with pops of black to anchor the space. “The design is a true combination of modern, vintage, and rustic all working together,” she says. “When all those things are present, for me, the overall aesthetic feels balanced.”
Indeed, nearly every aspect of the home was utilized for some purpose—an antique chair flanking the breakfast area serves as a cozy reading nook, while a wraparound corner sofa allows for intimate conversation. “One of the things that really drew me to the house is that I saw the ability to create vignettes and lots of different spaces in the house based on the original architecture,” Rondero says.
Ultimately, the opportunity to improve a home’s functionality while staying true to its original character was too good for Rondero to pass up. “As a designer or a renovator, any time you can find something that wasn’t touched recently, it feels more valid,” she says. “It’s always an opportunity to make the home better.”