A Case for Color, Character, and Courage

We called this project Stop and Smell the Wallpaper once, early on, because it captured something essential about the home and the experience of moving through it. It asks you to slow down, to notice what is around you, and to engage with each room rather than passing through on autopilot.

What the home at 4th Avenue ultimately became is a quiet argument for where residential design is headed and why this moment feels especially meaningful.

For a long stretch of time, residential design has favored safety. We softened our palettes, flattened our textures, and edited out anything that felt too personal or too opinionated. Entire homes were designed with a future buyer in mind, someone hypothetical who might arrive years down the line, someone whose preferences we could never actually know. Neutral became synonymous with responsible. Restraint became synonymous with good taste.

That approach made sense for a while. After years of rapid housing turnover, renovation television, and an overheated real estate market, homes were increasingly treated as products. Spaces needed to photograph well. They needed to feel broadly appealing. They needed to avoid risk.

But somewhere along the way, many homes lost their sense of adventure.

4th Avenue moves deliberately in the opposite direction. It does not attempt to please everyone. It does not attempt to blend in. Instead, it embraces the fact that a historic home in Baker, with defined rooms and long sightlines, offers something many open-concept spaces cannot. Each room is allowed to carry its own personality while still contributing to a cohesive whole.

This home is elegant, bold, and a little bit loud, and that combination is exactly what makes it joyful.

Every space is given permission to fully express itself. The dining room leans unapologetically into drama, wrapped in a floral mural that turns what was once a pass-through into a place people want to stay. The library creates a moment of compression and warmth, bookshelves enveloping you as you move through, drawing you forward rather than pushing you along. The kitchen balances playfulness and function through color, tile, and brass accents while still feeling grounded and highly usable.

Even the more utilitarian spaces refuse to fade quietly into the background. The mudroom explores pattern and contrast instead of defaulting to neutrality. The bathrooms embrace texture, mood, and layered materials, proving that functional spaces can still feel expressive and intentional. The laundry room becomes a space with presence rather than an afterthought hidden behind a door.

What makes 4th Avenue work is not that every room is bold, but that every room is considered. Color appears where it matters. Pattern is allowed to take center stage and then recede. Moments of visual rest are layered carefully between moments of intensity. The result is not chaos, but rhythm.

This kind of design would have felt risky not that long ago. Too colorful. Too specific. Too tied to the current owners. But that specificity is exactly what makes it feel right now.

We are seeing a shift away from designing homes for resale and back toward designing homes for living. Compartmentalized spaces are being celebrated again. Color is no longer treated as a liability. Pattern is no longer something to soften or apologize for. There is a renewed understanding that a home can be layered, expressive, and deeply personal without sacrificing longevity.

Homes like 4th Avenue remind us that character does not expire the way trends do. A space designed with intention, curiosity, and confidence tends to age better than one designed to offend no one.

This project brings joy to its owners because it reflects who they are and how they live. It rewards curiosity. It invites exploration. There is always another detail to notice, another moment to appreciate, another space that feels distinctly itself.

At 4th Avenue, design became an act of permission. Permission to move past fear. Permission to trust personal taste. Permission to believe that a home can be playful, elegant, layered, and meaningful all at once.

We believe this marks a broader return to personality in residential design, one that values experience over neutrality and joy over caution. If this is the direction we are heading, we are very glad to be here for it.