The renowned Kips Bay Decorator Show House Palm Beach makes its eighth return to the design-savvy city with a spectacularly fitting South Florida house: a 7,700 square-foot, red-brick home originally built in 1937 with panoramic views of the sparkling blue Intercoastal Waterway and Palm Beach Island. Open to the public through March 16, the ticketed event not only brings together some of design’s top talent, but also raises substantial funds for the Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club and the Boys & Girls Clubs of Palm Beach County. In the 50 years since its debut, Kips Bay Decorator Show House has raised more than $30 million to provide education and developmental programs for youth.
Surely inspired by the lush, leafy landscaping Palm Beach is known for, spectacular shades of green resonate throughout the designers’ spaces, starting with the verdant entry veranda Louise W. Cronan Interior Decoration crafted for the Monterrey-style home. Cronan enlisted muralist Chuck Fischer to create a beautiful backdrop in the small foyer featuring birds of paradise intertwined with Australian tree ferns in vibrant greens. Other shades of green ring triumphant, from pops of Kelly green in Amanda Reynal Interiors’ living room, which debuts Lee Jofa’s upcoming interior fabric and wallcovering collection for Lilly Pulitzer, to a custom coffered ceiling with “Parrot Green” lacquered insets in the dining room by Bierly Drake and Steele, Inc. to unexpected and very chic olive green and cream hand-painted Gracie walls by AD PRO Directory firm B.Berry Interiors in a guest room. “We may have become the record for Gracie’s fastest-track delivery of their custom paper,” Betsy Berry tells AD PRO. “It was quite a hail mary, but they made it happen.”
The viridescence crescendos in the backyard with AD PRO Directory talent Garden 26 Landscape Design’s “Green Bliss: A Retreat into Nature,” designed with the goal of reconnecting individuals with the gentle rhythms of the natural world via the utilization of layered tropical foliage, cascading greenery, and flowering plants surrounding a serene pool. This show house embraces a life en plein air, with multiple outdoor living spaces designed as richly as interior rooms. Fellow AD PRO Directory firm Meg Lonergan Interiors skillfully designed a covered loggia with a nearly 70-foot brick wall fabricated by The Shade Store using Sunbrella and Kravet drapery, trellising, and an ethereal mural on the ceiling. “When we couldn’t hang art in the typical sense because of the lack of walls and because of the brick, we used the ceiling, sculpture, and custom-designed commissioned furniture and our painterly rug as art form,” Lonergan says. “Our loggia and cabana also had two different ceiling heights, but you’d never know that because of our use of trellis as valance.”
Oxford Design also employed a bold use of layered draping, with fabrics by Romo, Samuel & Sons, and Lee Jofa, on an exterior covered terrace. To conceal some of the red-brick exterior walls, the AD PRO Directory practice turned to Splat Paint to upholster Andrew Martin wall panels to a frame substrate along with some special detailed paint touches.