RED ALERT!
Daring New Yorkers embrace brightly colored kitchens
IT’S time to let the kitchen — often one of the smallest spaces in a city apartment — shine.
While most New Yorkers still opt for an all-white cookspace, a few designers and homeowners are challenging convention and reinventing the color wheel.
Mixing too many hues can be overpowering, but going all in on a single shade can help unify a space.
“Color reads as a neutral when you splash it in large amounts and then accent in different colors,” advises Elle H-Millard, spokesperson for the National Kitchen and Bath Association.
Even local celebrities are finding their true colors. Actress Michelle Williams chose a bold blue for her Prospect Park South kitchen, while Dumbo resident and fashion designer Rebecca Minkoff decided on glossy black subway tiles for her backsplash and added cheerful turquoise touches.
See how these New Yorkers taste the rainbow — almost literally — in their snazzy kitchens.
FIRE-ENGINE RED
One of the largest apartments in Manhattan, which spans the 89th and 90th floors of a skyscraping residential tower in Midtown East, is home to a showstopping kitchen where stainless steel meets lipstick red full-on. “Our client asked for a functional, but iconic kitchen, and the full ‘flavor’ of this kitchen needed to strongly, but sensitively, stand out within the context of this home, filled with a world-class art collection,” says Ryoko Okada (left), principal and director of interior architecture/design at famed firm ODA New York. Okada had never worked with this exact hue before but felt it exuded just the right vibe. Plus, those views!
BOLT FROM THE BLUE
Jennifer Morris thrilled at the size of her clients’ house in Riverdale. “This kitchen is generous in terms of space and natural light, which is a boon for a designer because you have a great opportunity to play with color and materials,” says Brooklyn-based Morris. Given its position as a throughway to the rest of the six-bedroom family home, Morris made the $300,000 kitchen a focal point. “Blue can make a statement on its own, but it's also a perfect neutral color that works with every other color,” Morris adds. “It’s a gorgeous color with a powerful duality to it. It’s cheerful, but at the same time strong and serious.”
GOT THE GREEN LIGHT
Jason Oliver Nixon and John Loecke of design marketplace Madcap Cottage are known for color-rich interiors. To jazz up their former residence, a Tudor-style row house in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, the duo decked out their $140,000 kitchen in shades of green and yellow. “We love green. It’s a soothing neutral and a wonderful antidote to harried city living,” Nixon says. “The kitchen felt like it had been plucked from a much-layered English country house, and that was the goal: classic but timeless with whimsical flourishes. Why should kitchens be gray and white? How dull!”
PRETTY IN PINK
It’s hard not to swoon over the Pink Piano lacquered island in this Park Slope kitchen. The $30,000 project marked the first time that Michala Metzler — senior designer at German Kitchen Center, which carries luxury European brands — had a request for hot pink. Metzler paired cabinetry and appliances in the bright hue with panels of an exotic Macassar ebony wood rarely seen in kitchen design.
CRIMSON TIDE
The brazen kitchen in the penthouse of Soho’s 498 Broome St. is the brainchild of building owner Tom Sullivan (inset), who heads Gracious Home. (He just opened an outpost on the ground floor.) Sullivan tapped Italian custom kitchen purveyors Officine Gullo for the $350,000 task. After perusing nearly 400 options, Sullivan decided on red. He says, “I was sick of boring, sterile-looking kitchens.”