What’s striking is how a relatively small amount of color is used with maximum effectiveness.
A touch of bold 1940’s lipstick red is guaranteed to be memorable in a kitchen, no matter how the color is used. I have a serious affinity for red, which conveys a sense of energy and fun and makes me admire the daring of red kitchen folk.
New York designer Joe Nye basically created a black and white room with a huge pop from an unusual red ceiling keyed off the knobs on the pro-style range. It’s clearly a new room — flat screen’s the tell — with whiffs of vintage from the wallpaper and a battery of semi-flushmount school house fixtures, definitely love-it-or-hate-it lighting championed by Restoration Hardware lighting, among others.
Normally, a black and white checkerboard floor crushes any visual competition but color rules here as the eye is drawn to the ceiling so strongly it’s hard to spend time anywhere else. Rose-colored glasses couldn’t succeed any better.
At least three people I know had a kitchen like this vintage beauty with the stainless-edged red laminate counters and backsplash intact. How lucky to have original material so well preserved since it frames the sink area perfectly. It could be argued that the shelf backs and strip of wall above the window should match the red for emphasis but yellow works effectively, too. Slab-front cabinets are nicely repainted and neutralized, the striped sink mat points up the rouge, and I love to see black cabinet pulls when most might replace them with brushed stainless.
