Hotel of the Week: This Harbour Island Hideaway Reveals a Sunny, Maximalist New Look
Founded on the stylish Bahamian sanctuary by silver-screen star Brett King and his wife, Sharon, Coral Sands Inn & Cottages embraces a vintage Slim Aarons aesthetic with its vivacious second act
Attracting as many celebrities as nicknames, Harbour Island, the “Nantucket of the Caribbean,” or Briland as locals call it, has managed to maintain an essence of barefoot luxury (and lack of paparazzi) despite the likes of India Hicks and Uma Thurman owning homes on the 3.5-mile-long enclave off Eleuthera, in The Bahamas.
Luring everyone from the Duke and Duchess of Windsor to Helmut Newton, Mick Jagger, and, more recently, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, the pastel clapboard homes and New England-style architecture are as much a draw as the powdery pink beaches and thriving barrier reef—the third-longest in the world.
In the late 1960s, actor Brett King—who filmed alongside John Wayne and Bette Davis—and his wife, Sharon, followed the lead of rock stars and royalty to Harbour Island, trading Hollywood for a hotel and founding Coral Sands Inn & Cottages on a covetable stretch of the hallmark pink shores. When AJ Capital Partners—the firm behind such unique properties as Rusacks St Andrews in the U.K. and Common House in New Orleans—acquired the property nearly a half-century later, it was tasked with re-envisioning an institution without losing its perennial charm.
“When we were designing Coral Sands, it was less about creating something new and more about recalling its original spirit through the lens of Harbour Island itself,” Krissy Melendez, head of design at AJ Capital Partners, tells Galerie. “It stands as a tribute to Brett and Sharon King, whose love story brought them here, and to the unhurried sun-drenched world once captured by renowned photographer Slim Aarons.”
Eyeing Aarons’s shots from the 1960s and ‘70s, the island remains almost trapped in time, apart from the influx of golf carts that serve as the primary mode of transport around the billionaire playground. Melendez incorporated elements of Harbour Island from this era, taking inspiration from the Kings’s vintage photos and weaving in flora and fauna motifs everywhere—from the canopied beds to the custom Schumacher fabric and wallpaper that could easily have been plucked out of Palm Beach.
“The palette of crushed coral sand, turquoise waters, and quiet coastal life was intended to blur the lines between landscape and room,” says Melendez, whose interiors also feature a copious amount of shells, from the 7,000 hand-clad pieces on the restaurant’s columns to those forming mirror frames and light fixtures. “We’re firm believers that time is the truest designer, so our aim was to celebrate the character already shaped over decades and the exuberant Bahamian culture.”
Coral Sands’s version of exuberance is a maximalist take on the tropics, with 41 accommodations that include sea-facing and garden cottages, a three-bedroom villa, and a duo of beachside residences—Brett’s and Sharon’s, respectively—named after the owners, outfitted with wraparound terraces and private plunge pools. Local artist Ersley Wilson painted the pool’s mermaid mosaic and utilized foraged wood for signs scattered throughout the 8-acre property, which now includes Barbie-pink basketball and pickleball courts, a new padel court, and an open-air fitness pavilion equipped with Peloton bikes and a plunge pool (a spa is slated for later in the year). Chickens and roosters scurry across perfectly manicured seagrape- and palm-lined pathways that dip down to the sand.
Throughout the day, guests alternate between the striped poolside cabanas overlooking the sea and loungers framing Pink Sands Beach, where horseback riders occasionally strut through clear-as-glass water. Perpetually packed, open-air lunch spot Coral Sands Beach Bar is an elevated take on the island’s no-fuss conch shacks, serving signatures like stone-fired truffle conch pizza and Kalik beer-battered conch fritters, while the hotel’s pièce de résistance, the Pink Mermaid, infuses Bahamian flair into coastal Italian cuisine (the conch and stone crab scampi tagliatelle is a standout).
The dusty rose and Tiffany blue hand-painted ceiling murals nod to the island’s native plants, but it’s easy to get distracted by the restaurant’s lavish, shell- and coral-adorned chandeliers dangling over the scallop-shaped chairs at the bar, where guests are just as likely to brush elbows with a yacht captain as a fashion designer.