Inside A Modern Seattle Home Embracing A Colorful Palette

The Pacific Northwest has long been a bastion of subtle palettes reflective of the landscape, but this Lake Washington abode sounds a different note. Rather than choosing grays and greens, the homeowners took a brighter approach, opting for a color story developed by designer Julie Massucco Kleiner that reflects the sparkle of Seattle on a sunny day.

But before they could realize the palette, the couple needed to focus on an extensive remodel. “It was an older house and didn’t suit the family’s needs,” says residential designer Scott Vajda, who picked up the project’s reins when his colleague, architect Stephen Rising, retired. To take full advantage of the waterfront site with grounds by landscape architect Richard Hartlage of Land Morphology, Vajda, working with general contractor Owen Roberts, kept the existing footprint but oriented the new structure to the lake. “It can be tricky to create privacy while opening a home to the views, but it’s a steep site and this house sits forward from its neighbors,” the residential designer explains.

“These clients wanted a modern home but with classic elements,” Vajda continues. When configuring the main floor’s layout, he focused on the kitchen, which sits at the core of the dwelling, overlooking the water. “Everything pinwheeled off of that space,” he explains. Following the site’s contours, the kitchen, dining room and library are on one plane, and the living room is a few steps down. While each room has its own personality, Vajda connected them with a shared palette of materials, including glass, steel, Venetian plaster and stone. The travertine walls in the living room are a continuation of the exterior cladding sourced in Italy. “We brought back three types and did mock-ups with each to decide which color stone was right,” he says. “The light here makes such a difference, and we didn’t want the house to be too yellow.” Bringing softness to the interiors are Venetian-plaster walls and pale oak floors. “They both add warmth, and doing the floors in a chevron pattern added a traditional element the clients liked,” he notes.

When it came to composing the rooms, Kleiner followed a complex but engaging brief. “The clients love to entertain, so the house needed to accommodate gatherings,” the designer explains. “On the other hand, they enjoy private time and are anticipating more of that when their children leave for college, so it needed to be a fit for just two as well.” Both desires are served with a mix of larger areas (such as the dining room that opens to the living room and the view) and more intimate spaces (like the tangerine-hued breakfast room and the cozy library).

When considering how a person would move through the spaces, Kleiner asked herself: “How can we draw people into the rooms?” The answer was finding a hero piece for each space and building from there. In the living room, it’s the hot-pink sofa that faces a side chair upholstered with a Christian Lacroix print, a nod to the wife’s interest in fashion. Custom Tiffany-blue upholstered chairs that, according to Kleiner, look like “ladies in waiting” attract attention in the dining room. And in the library, a bright-blue piano boldly paired with yellow sofas catches the eye. “This house has some sizzle!” the designer notes.

“We always lean hard into color,” she continues. “And because these clients wanted a little whimsy, we did it through wallpapers, like the graphic black-and-tan design in the dining room and the delicate lavender-and-blush wallcovering with a cherry blossom motif in the primary bedroom.” Kleiner also used a sherbet-orange wallpaper for the breakfast nook as a means of balancing the periwinkle cabinets in the kitchen. “There’s a lot of color-wheel play, a great push-pull of hues,” she says. “This whole house is yummy like candy.”

“It was a meticulous effort from everyone involved to really capture what the homeowners wanted,” Vajda reflects. “I’m so grateful for how willing they were to experiment,” Kleiner adds. “They took risks, which made this project beautiful and rewarding.”