I love red in the kitchen. To be honest, I just love kitchen design, always have, and always will -- The mix of materials, functionality, the easy gathering of friends and family, creativity, and food and laughter. Red is special. It can be used in small amounts or large and can be used to illustrate and highlight all of the things I love about kitchens.

Red is not a new concept for the kitchen. It’s been used by generations of homeowners and restaurateurs, formally and informally, consciously and sub-consciously. There is a direct connection between the color psychology of red and many of the things we want to achieve in a kitchen. Red enhances creativity, it makes us feel warm, and it stimulates our appetites.

I was recently reviewing before and after snapshots of a completed project. The space already had a very nice, recently renovated white marble kitchen when I was brought in. As with many spaces, the kitchen just needed something else to make it special and to connect it to the family that lived in the space. In our first meeting, the client mentioned red, specifically a red clock she already had, and a red pin-up board she liked, but wasn’t sure if it was “too much.”

We ran with those two items and a few more – custom red seat pads for the Bertoia dining chairs, new red upholstery for the desk chair, and tied the vision together with a custom red, lacquered frame for a collection of fantastic, vintage rock album art.