ODE TO JOY

With a passion for colour guiding both the designer and homeowner, a West Vancouver house is remade into a home for happiness.

2020-04-01 - TEXT KATIE HAYDEN | PHOTOGRAPHY JANIS NICOLAY

With a passion for colour guiding both the designer and homeowner, a West Vancouver house is remade into a home for happiness.

When the perfect couple meet, we think of it as kismet. That’s what it was like when designer Ami McKay rolled up to the mint green, 1930s-era Westside Vancouver house in her bright yellow Mini Cooper and spotted a pair of delightfully pink chairs out front. “When the owner answered the door, I said, ‘Somebody likes colour!’ And she said, ‘That’s why you’re here!’” Ami recalls.

The designer herself has had a love affair with colour since living in India in her twenties. Says Ami: “Seeing all the stunning, vibrant green, pink, yellow, purple saris against the dirt roads and natural landscapes, and the colours that people decorated their animals with – they’d put polka dots on their dogs and flowers around their cows’ necks. It inspired me.”

“FROM OUR FIRST MEETING, AMI UNDERSTOOD OUR AESTHETIC AND WAS PASSIONATE ABOUT BRINGING IT TO LIFE.”-Homeowner

“THE COLOURS WE CHOSE ARE PLAYFUL AND FEARLESS. SOME ARE VIBRANT, SOME SUBDUED.”-Ami

The kitchen’s new plan included adding bar-style seating at the island — a place for the owners’ daughters to eat breakfast and do homework — plus designated drawers for the owner’s baking supplies and countertop parking for her Kitchenaid stand mixer. An early riser, she often whips up fresh treats in the mornings. “Everything’s arranged perfectly so she scoops this, scoops this, adds eggs and milk, and then her kids have fresh baked goodness in the morning,” Ami says.

But the owner’s distinct vision for her home transcended colour. “We wanted it to feel joyful and have moments of whimsy,” she says of the threestorey, four-bedroom home she shares with her husband, two daughters and family dog. “We wanted our space to look like a family lives here! It didn’t need to be ‘adults only,’” she explains. “Our girls voted on many of the design decisions. At the end of the day, it’s their home, too.”

She felt that Ami had a real understanding of her desires. “Ami’s enthusiasm and energy for our vision was infectious,” she says. “Her flair with colour and her willingness to be bold was the perfect fit for us. She was as joyful as the home we wanted to create.”

Functionally, the homeowners’ issues with the house read like a laundry list of top home complaints: inadequate storage; a boring beige palette; narrow doorways; a space that didn’t adequately show off the family’s art (in this case, a great collection of contemporary Canadian pieces). Most notably, she wanted to transform the kitchen. “I wanted an island that would be a hub for food prep and I wanted our daughters to have a space to sit for breakfast while I prepped their lunches. I love to bake and cook, and I wanted a kitchen that really worked.”

Throughout the house, Ami was tasked with overhauling the vibe and palette, freshening surfaces with new flooring and tile, widening doorways, and bringing in eye-catching new furniture and accessories. In the kitchen and master bedroom, she also redrew the floorplans. One key to modernizing the spaces both functionally and aesthetically was adding show-stopping new built-ins in a number of the rooms.

“THERE’S A BLANKET IN THE LIVING ROOM THAT’S PINK AND BLUE AND YELLOW; SHE SHOWED IT TO ME AND SAID, ‘THIS IS ME!’”-Ami

The redesign didn’t, however, mean gutting everything. “We kept the character and charm, but we had a lot of fun with it,” Ami says. And, interestingly, for a homeowner and designer in love with colour, the walls here are almost all painted white. “It’s just such a nice background for all the hits of colour,” Ami reasons. “And they have beautiful art, so we wanted that to stand out.” But in every room, there are flourishes of colour and pattern intended to intrigue and delight. “The colours we chose are playful and fearless. Some of them are vibrant; some are subtle,” Ami muses. “I really think joyous is the best word to describe this house.”

The homeowner couldn’t agree more. “It feels like us now. There’s more light, more colour, more space to be together as a family,” she says. “In our home, there’s a lot of laughter, singing and chatter, and the space now seems to echo our joy.”

“THE SOFT FRENCH BLUE ON THE BEDROOM BUILT-INS WAS PARTLY INSPIRED BY THE OWNER’S LOVE OF FRENCH COUNTRY DESIGN.”-Ami

In the master bedroom, Ami dialed up the function by adding a wall of kitted-out closets (she even bumped out the roofline slightly to accommodate more hanging space). Ami set off the warm tone of the built-ins’ wall and the fir flooring by painting the top half of the closets an ethereal blue. Instead of sacrificing the window to create an uninterrupted run of closets, Ami added a built-in dresser under it; she then used the dresser to set a line for the colour-blocking.

Ami pulled out all the stops in the master bathroom, dressing a statement-making feature wall behind the deep soaker tub in six contrasting tile patterns. “The owner likes French country colours — hence the blue and yellow tones,” Ami explains. “We had the tiles custommade, so we had to pick colours and just hope they’d all work together,” Ami says. “When they came in, I laid them all out on the bedroom floor and played and played with them, customizing the pattern.” With its simple slanted wooden feet, the vanity looks like a 1950s-era dresser.

“OUR GIRLS VOTED ON MANY OF THE DESIGN DECISIONS. AT THE END OF THE DAY, IT’S THEIR HOME, TOO.”-Homeowner

DOOR, West Coast Mouldings and Doors; Emtek DOOR HANDLE, Bradford Hardware; TOWEL HOOKS, Anthropologie; SCONCE, Cedar & Moss; Vivid White 1111 COUNTERTOP,

Caesarstone; Kohler SINK, Kohler; TAPS, FAUCET, Robinson; fan-shaped white TILES,

Centura Tile; Kohler SHOWER HEAD, CONTROLS, Robinson.