Paint colors and inspiration for spring

Even though it’s April (and shouldn’t it be warm already?), spring continues to engage in its annual stop-and-start routine, faking out everyone—and everything, flora included—with a few nice days before heading back into hiding.

But whether or not spring is ready to come out and play, we’re gleaning springtime color inspiration from a few of our favorite interiors from our weekly home tours column, House Calls.

Whether it’s the graphic punch of a bold table in Brooklyn, an interior landscape of soothing pastel in New Zealand, the groovy vibes of a ranch in Maine, or muted tile in a Los Angeles midcentury modern house, color perks us up after the droop of winter—and that’s something worth celebrating.

The corner of a room. One wall is covered in assorted blue and white tiles. There is a wooden table and chairs. The other wall has floor to ceiling windows.

How a “swinging ’60s bachelor pad” became a family home

A door painted like a bold red lip, glimmering green in a kitchen designed by Emily Farnham, and a bright-pink throw blanket in the master bedroom contrast an earthy, neutral color palette at this hillside house in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, once described as a “swinging ’60s bachelor pad.”

With the help of five different architects and as many renovations over the years—plus a heap of Heath Ceramics tiles—the house has been transformed into a family home for five, twice the size of its original footprint.

A wall of the bedroom covered in dark green floral patterned wallpaper. There is a light colored wooden dresser in front of the wall with a framed artwork and various toiletries sitting on top.

A couple finds their midcentury dream home

Mint-green walls, a pastel-pink daybed, and buttery brown leather invite you to take a load off in the New Zealand home of Nick Walbridge and Tara Morton, a circa-1965 house with a California modernist sensibility and Japanese influence. Tucked away in one of the home’s three “wings” is a bedroom painted a deep, seductive green, complemented by William Morris wallpaper. And then, of course, there’s the pool in the back, where a bright-yellow diving board beckons; it’s surrounded by lush gardens dotted with Japanese maples, cherry trees, and magnolia trees.

Two people sit working at a bright blue painted table. One person is typing on a laptop which is open. The other person has a pencil and two stacks of paper with text printed. There is a book, a tea kettle, and a tea cup on the table.

“The apartment has grown around us”

Nozlee Samadzadeh and Jarrett Moran’s favorite piece of furniture in their 400-square-foot studio apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is a bright blue-topped dining table. “I like that the first thing you see when you enter the apartment is this real statement piece,” says Samadzadeh. Originally a “weird studio with shiny brown floors, a blue toilet, and no walls anywhere,” their now natural-light-flooded apartment has wall-to-wall shelving, a sofa upholstered in fabric sporting an artichoke print, and a handmade quilt inspired by the work of Josef Albers and the now-closed Hopewell Workshop.

A large orange and white cat sits in front of a white door. On one wall in the foreground is a hanging framed work of art above a table. On a wall in the distance is a large window and a bookcase full of books. There is a blue chair and white couch in the

Inside Wary Meyers’s groovy live-work home carved from a classic Maine ranch

At John and Linda Meyers’s 1960 ranch-style home in Cumberland, Maine, the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s mix and mingle—with the help of lots of color. The furniture and accessory assemblage is eclectic and spans decades. A purple Pierre Paulin chair; colorful backgammon set by Albrizzi; and a bright-orange enameled sink by American Standard (“a joy of my life,” says Linda) are just some of the splashes of crayon color in the home, much of which has directly influenced their work as Wary Meyers (currently, Linda makes the soap and John makes the candles).

A bright yellow painted hallway with doors on both sides. There is a shelf on one side of the hallway with an ornate work of art sitting on it.

A renovation 47 years in the making—and a mother-son dream team

It’s hard not to fall in love with the Upper West Side apartment of celebrated cookbook author Dorie Greenspan. Color is woven thoughtfully throughout the space in a design and renovation overseen by her son Josh, of Studio 639, from the Bordeaux-hued Warren Platner chairs for Knoll and their accompanying cactuses to an exclamation point of a yellow—Farrow & Ball Babouche—covering the walls of their hallway. Sneaky sources of yellow find their way to other rooms, too: in artwork, or a Callimaco floor lamp by Ettore Sottsass for Artemide, or the trim of a blanket.

The wall of the kitchen is painted blue. There are cabinets without doors that hold various assorted ceramic bowls, mugs, plates, and vases. There is a window above the sink with a houseplant. The kitchen sink is white and the countertops are tan.

“Moving to LA rekindled my sense of inspiration”

Jessie Levison and Alex Trendleman’s sunny bungalow in LA County’s Glendale is infused with color in many ways, not least of all in the couple’s collection of objects—“knick knacks from our travels, flea markets, gifts to one another,” Levison explains—on dining room shelves built and installed by the former tenant. Their kitchen is painted teal and lime green; shelves are full of bright, patterned ceramics; and the backyard is a mish-mash of plants, the centerpiece of which is a fruiting lemon tree. (The most color might happen in Levison’s studio, where the printmaker runs her stationery company, Gold Teeth Brooklyn.)

The corner of a kitchen with built in sitting booth and a table that has a basket of fruit on it . There are plants hanging from planters on the ceiling and multiple framed works of art on the wall.

In Bed-Stuy, making a home in a former chocolate factory

Indoor plants often bring much-needed color and life to home, and that was the case in Fia Alvarez and Adam Squires’s Brooklyn apartment in a former chocolate factory. Squires is the green thumb in the household, and tends to the various plants around the apartment, which heap upon tables, drape from the ceiling, nestle into corners, and hang among pots and pans on an apparatus the couple commissioned for the large support in the kitchen.

A living area with a blue couch in the foreground. There is a white stove in the center of the room. There are wooden cabinets against the far wall.

A couple walks into a bar

The vibrant, fire-engine-red of structural steel inside Bert Pieters and Yves Drieghe’s Ghent, Belgium, home—once a derelict former pub—might be the first thing to draw your eye, but it won’t be the only thing. Pink, royal blue, and bright orange all make appearances in this scruffy, post-industrial space. Irreverence is a theme in the house, which sports peekaboo walls of translucent polycarbonate, balustrades made of soccer netting (in homage to the space’s previous use), and a ground-floor “sleeping box” with an unprintable nickname that nods to other bedtime activities.

Spring is here!