A few winters ago, at the time of year when whipping winds send ice crystals into every crevasse, from keyholes to tree bark, a gentleman appeared at a site on the southern coast of Maine, the location of his future home.

He was there to meet an architectural designer to figure out how high the house should sit in order to capture the best views. He was there in dress shoes, having come straight from work in Boston, but that didn’t stop him. He instinctively jumped atop the railing of a frozen wooden deck and peered out, balancing as he took in Saco Bay, Richmond Island, and beyond.

“I was watching him, just scared to death he would slip,” admits his designer, Trevor Watson. “But it worked—that’s how we ended up setting the elevation.”

Watson, who at the time was the design lead for Eider Investments, a design-build-maintain company based out of Prouts Neck, knew that this element of the project was critical to get right. (He now holds a similar position at Knickerbocker Group.) Even for an Eider house—and there are many—this one’s location is exceptional: the eastern coast of the peninsula, with both bay and ocean views as well as frontage to protected wetlands. With three rewarding exposures on an already coveted slice of waterfront, it felt crucial to maximize the benefits of the rarified location with the enjoyment of a future family home. The site is among the rarest and most sought-after slices of the eastern seaboard—no pressure!

Watson was soon joined by interior designer Leandra Fremont-Smith and noted landscape design firm Mitchell and Associates, charged with shaping the outdoor spaces as well as protecting the adjacent wetlands. Together, the team launched into the rapid-fire design and construction schedule necessary for a summer cottage that ultimately would allow one Boston-area family to slow way down.

The collaboration yielded Spindrift, a stately shingled home with contemporary design sensibilities and modern conveniences—an underground garage, for example. On Prouts, with its rich artistic and architectural heritage, there’s a high bar for residential elegance, and the team took on the task hungrily. But there was a step before that: navigating the famously challenging bylaws of the Prouts Neck community.

In order to partake in the rich offerings of the peninsula—there are four private clubs (one boating, one bathing, and two tennis) for its roughly 200 families—it’s prudent to adhere to the community association’s guidelines, which include no major building during the high season. “And June 15 comes around quickly,” says Watson. That means no hauling of lumber or windows, no flatbed trucks, and no major disturbances for a quarter of the year. “But the truth is, those rules are less about noise and inconvenience and more about the kids,” explains Watson. Indeed, like other special communities in coastal Maine, Prouts Neck is a place where children roam freely, on bare feet and on bikes, moving from beach to club and back home again.

The architectural designer’s first assignment was working with the homeowner to determine what the flavor of the home would be. “With a coastal cottage like this, you have two options,” Watson explains. “There’s the subdued elegance of John Calvin Stevens, Maine’s most famous architect, or the more whimsical Emersonian architecture prevalent in Bar Harbor. The style of Stevens is more muted, which is appropriate for Prouts Neck.” Stevens designed an estimated 18 houses here, and each offers an invitation to enjoy the lush and craggy New England landscape from inside and out, via broad porches and banks of windows. Unsurprisingly, Stevens was also a landscape painter and a crony of Winslow Homer. (In the 1880s Stevens designed the painter’s still-standing home studio as well as houses for the artist’s two brothers; payment for at least one house came in the form of a painting.)

An embracing of the landscape was paramount in the planning of Spindrift. In laying out the outdoor living room, porches, picture windows, and primary-suite deck, Watson heeded the path of the sun as it arches over the south side of the property and then sets over the front door. When you come through the front door you’re given the best view in the house: a sweep of the beaches and out to Richmond Island. “These houses are showpieces— they’re works of art—and you want people to feel amazed,” adds the designer.

Alongside highlighting the site’s best exposures, the design team also minimized its challenges. Smartly, the wall closest to a neighbor isn’t an expanse of windows but a handsome shingled exterior opposite a gas fireplace inside, thereby preserving both comfort and privacy.

Many interior layout decisions were made in chorus with Fremont-Smith, a Yarmouth-based interior designer with projects from South Florida to Northeast Harbor. Fremont-Smith was handed an unusual-for-her challenge: her able partners—color and pattern—weren’t welcome on this jobsite. Her portfolio points to a body of work that reconciles Northeast prudence with a joie de vivre typically seen closer to the Tropic of Capricorn. But this project, with its warm, collaborative team (both homeowners and professionals), pushed her to channel her creativity down a new, more subdued path.

In the absence of vibrant hues, Fremont-Smith turned to texture and contrast to imbue the home with warmth and character. The floor stain, a shade of walnut that the interior designer describes as the palest of the darker hues, plays a critical role in grounding diaphanous paint colors, and a grasscloth wallcovering in the den adds depth in a way that paint can’t. Chevron-pattern shiplap creates an expansive entryway ceiling that adds interest and integrity the second you cross the threshold. “This project taught me a lot about playing with neutrals,” she says.

“I thought a lot about the winter and how, even if there isn’t color, to still make it feel warmed up,” says Fremont- Smith. Her team landed on a spectrum of whites and creams in keeping with the client’s request for tranquility and timelessness. “Still, I shy away from beige and gray,” Fremont-Smith explains. “Especially in cooler light, it can look dingy.” Instead, a chalky off-white—Slipper Satin from Farrow and Ball—fit the bill. “It had never been my go-to color, but in the sun-filled parts of the house, it felt right.”

Look closely, though, and her firm’s signature hallmarks are still there: thoughtful trims on the upholstery, a handful of personality-full printed textiles on window treatments and cushions, dashes of unexpected color like the pale orchid powder-room vanity, and a brass lighting scheme that adds a cheerful glint throughout the home.

The kicker is, those decorating final touches happened at the onset of peak season, past the date that a box truck could make a few efficient trips for an all-at-once installation. Instead, Fremont-Smith and her team repacked dozens of items and sent them off to Prouts Neck, piecemeal, in passenger cars. And as those cars, slowed to the requisite pokey (and safe) 25 miles per hour, made their deliveries to this elegant rock, kids were already playing outside in bare feet and on bikes. In time, two more would join: new neighbors from a perfectly perched house called Spindrift.