10 Kitchens Dripping With Bold, Vivacious Color
Sights and smells collide for a synesthetic experience in these 10 homes from around the world. Drawn from the Dwell Magazine print archive, these kitchens sport audacious, stimulating hues ranging from cheery greens to blazing oranges and yellows.
A Yellow-and-Gray Kitchen in New York
Geraldine and Kit Laybourne remodeled the kitchen in their High Line apartment with yellow and gray interiors. The kitchen features an Artematica Vitrum glass system from Valcucine, artwork by Craig Kucia, and banquette cushion fabrics by Hella Jongerius for Maharam.
Inspired by the sea and sand, Richard and Jackie Willcocks chose blue and orange joinery colors for their 1,140-square-foot prefab. The modular home is by New South Wales company ArchiBlox.
Dominic Houser's no-nonsense longhouse in the Hebrides of Scotland—an archipelago on the northwest coast—features a blue that mirrors the color of the ocean. The vaulted space and uncluttered interiors are perfect for Houser's regular meditation practice.
The budget was nearly as tight as the space in this cheerful renovation of a 516-square-foot flat in Bratislava. The centerpiece of Lukáš Kordík’s new kitchen is the cabinetry surrounding the sink, a feat he managed by altering the facing and pulls of an off-the-rack Ikea system. The laminate offers a good punch of blue, and in modernist fashion, Kordík forwent door handles in favor of cutouts. "I wanted the kitchen to be one simple block of color without any additional design," he says.
Though this kitchen fits in with its period surroundings, a few tweaks keep it current. "It’s functional in a way that doesn’t feel like the kitchen is in the living room," says architect Rick Black. He explains, "One of the goals was to make the islands more like furniture than like heavy objects that go all the way to the floor."
Color abounds in artistic director Jean Christophe Aumas’s Paris apartment. He designed the kitchen island, which is covered in marble tiles from Carrelages du Marais—the geometric floor tiles are from the same place—and strung the matrix of lights up above it. The barstools by Charlotte Perriand were discovered in a vintage store in Antwerp, Belgium. The green wall is covered in paint from Emery & Cie.
Eye-popping color is used sparingly in Nick Evans and Celia Sellschop’s house, but with great effect—not least in the brilliant green kitchen that sits at the home’s center. Celia is a chef in London and runs a supper club, so space for culinary experimentation was an essential part of Nick’s self-imposed brief. This is the first home he has designed for himself, and he’s glad he didn’t do it earlier in his career.
A 12-foot "display island" gives this kitchen programmatic function—food and drinks are prepared here; cooking and cleaning are consigned to the back—and helps make it a welcoming space, whether homeowners Pacek and Roynon are entertaining or simply enjoying time to themselves. The soft green hue adds an inviting touch.
Fabian and Dorothee Heine’s renovation began and ended with a particular kitchen system. Almost a year before finding the flat they would call home, the Hamburg-based couple decided upon a matte black Vipp kitchen that Fabian had glimpsed in the window of the company’s Copenhagen showroom. The island serves as a generous workspace for Fabian to prepare dishes with her son Morten.
Artist Stephen Waddell and wife Isabel Kunigk—a landscape designer—remodeled their 1,300-square-foot bungalow with a raised roof and a kitchen that opens up to the living room. The apple-green cabinets were made by Waddell and a friend, and yellow stools add a playful touch.
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