Design Currents: Color Contrast

Striking color contrasts are energizing interiors in Brooklyn and beyond.

Photos clockwise from left: Madeline Tolle for Hollie Velten, Areaware, Areaware, and Abrams

by Cate Corcoran

07/10/2023 3 minute 0

Striking color contrasts are energizing interiors in Brooklyn and beyond. A Massachusetts kitchen by Reath Design zings with Delft blue, lavender, tomato, and daffodil. Shades of azure outline windows and doors and create trompe-l’œil arches in rooms by designers Frances Merrill, Gillian Lawlee, and Hollie Velten.

No stranger to a vibrant mix, New Jersey interior designer and Brooklyn expat Velten went a step further in a client’s basement with “color folding,” her inventive phrase for imbuing the space with interlocking swathes of subtle hue and cheerfully contrasting furnishings.

No small number of rooms exhibit spirited tints in “Uncommon Kitchens” by Brooklyn alum and former House Beautiful editor in chief Sophie Donelson, out from Abrams. Retailers and makers are flashing on the trend with a bevy of boldly hued wares as disparate as rugs, wastebaskets, refrigerators, and bathroom sinks.

Having painted the staircase in her Carroll Gardens townhouse shocking pink, designer Fawn Galli has moved onto black and white with pops of color in another brownstone nearby. In the living room, parrot green curtains contrast with sunny yellow shelves and a turquoise chair.