Kitchen

“I love the house more each day,” says Tamami Sylvester of her and husband Michael's home by Sebastian Mariscal in Venice, California. The kitchen, which includes all Miele appliances, is sheathed in custom woodwork from Semihandmade. Accessories from A+R complement the Caesarstone countertops and Franke faucet. A LifeSource Water System provides filtration. Photo by Coral von Zumwalt.

Breakfast nook

Aaron and Yuka Ruell transformed a 1950s Portland ranch house into a retro-inspired family home with plenty of spaces for their four children to roam. In the kitchen, interior designer Emily Knudsen Leland replaced purple laminate cabinets with flat-sawn eastern walnut, and added PentalQuartz countertops in polished Super White for contrast. The kitchen island is clad with original red tiles, and hanging cabinets above it were removed to maximize light and family-room views.

In the kitchen, interior designer Emily Knudsen Leland replaced purple laminate cabinets with flat-sawn eastern walnut, and added PentalQuartz countertops in polished Super White for contrast. The cooktop and oven are from Miele.

On the upper level, a black "shed" cleverly incorporates the kitchen, bathroom, and storage.

New Montana Moss stone covers the chimney, and is paired with a sandstone hearth that runs to the exterior wall. New elements on that wall include storage with custom metal panel doors, fire screen, fire tools, and andirons, all designed by Willis DeWitt and Miles Woofter, and built by Ponderosa Forge. Interior designer Carolyn Woofter artfully orchestrated the home’s look and feel, collaborating on custom cabinet designs, making material selections, and choosing most of the furnishings.

Birch veneer wraps the interior of the minimalist home, lending a sense of warmth.

Exposed timber ceilings lend a sense of rustic refinement to Olson Kundig's Country Garden House

The almost-entirely tallowwood kitchen is custom. Muuto pendant lights, bar stools by Alvar Aalto for Artek, a Vola faucet, and a ceiling fan by Beacon Lighting finish the room.

Mami and Ishii Hideaki (a friend and .......Research employee) prepare lunch in the cozy main building. The room is rustic and utilitarian, with a double-decker wood-burning stove, tons of open storage, and a sink fashioned from galvanized buckets. But there’s an underlying high-design ethos: The wire baskets are handmade classics from Korbo, a Swedish company, and what looks like a paper-wrapped box in front of the stove is actually a leather cushion by Japanese artist Nakano.

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 built-in hardware is one of Simon's favorite elements of the kitchen. "We liked the idea of not having a lot of jewelry in this room," she says. The pendant lights are from Shades of Light, the bar stools from Interlude Home, the wall sconces from Cedar and Moss, and the accessories are from Everything But the House, an online auction house.

Breccia Capraia marble continues from the countertop to form the backsplash and open shelving.

A George Nelson Saucer Pendant hangs over the table. Behind it, a vertical slot window frames a Douglas fir tree while editing out the windows of a nearby town house. “All the openings were composed in direct response to appealing fragments of the site and to avoid relationships that would leave the owners feeling exposed,” Schaer says.

For this kitchen, the architects paired slate-gray HPL (high-pressure laminate) cabinets by Henrybuilt, cool Basaltina countertops, with custom shelving and a white Corian backsplash.

Stacey and Doug prepare food before the kitchen's massive wall of soothing tile from Heath Ceramics.

For the kitchen, American cherry wood was used to create cabinets that establish a warm and sturdy tone. Each piece of lumber was purchased at auction by the Brillharts and stored in New Hampshire, before being shipped to Miami and milled on site. The wood island is painted black to provide a point of visual contrast.

While the house’s original pine is richly colored and textured, a number of structural posts rendered the kitchen difficult to furnish with modern fixtures. A newly-added black beam, which extends outward into the dining room, allowed for the posts’ removal.