Black, White and Read All Over

Photo: House Beautiful

I read a lot of shelter magazines for pleasure and generally to stay on the up-and-up of what's going on the design world. There are always a ton of amazing ideas that sort of mill around in my head for a while, but rarely do I find a project that I want to execute verbatim. Well, not so in the February 2012 issues of House Beautiful. You see, there's this great design team in Los Angeles, Nickey · Kehoe, who redid this ridiculously beautiful Craftsman home in Venice and basically painted every single solitary piece of wood in the place white, which is - I know - heresy in some circles. Oh, and they did all the beams and crown molding BLACK.


I only bring this up because it's frigging INSPIRED and because I currently live in an apartment that is rocking it's own brand of paint-challenged crown molding.



If I have one complaint about my place - and I do love it for its size, layout, etc. - it's that it's way too dark. Oh, and the crown molding is painted two distinct colors: White and Creamy Drunken Tapioca.

Anyway, I think the Nickey · Kehoe combination of white walls, black molding would do just the trick in this place - brightening it up, giving it some definition, all the while not dragging the space down.


Photo: Amy Neunsinger for House Beautiful | Interior: Nickey · Kehoe


Photo: Amy Neunsinger for House Beautiful | Interior: Nickey · Kehoe

And in case you're wondering, the white they used is Benjamin Moore's Simply White. The article didn't specify a black, but it's definitely one of the more inky blacks Benjamin Moore carries... no gray tones here.

Best of all, you can see full before-and-afters of the entire home here:

Full resource list found here, Pg. 96, Feather Your Nest