Hi Folks

I have just seen the MOST HIDEOUS kitchen in America. And….this is the shocking part…it was done by an ARCHITECT for the 2006 House Beautiful Designer Showhouse in Miami, FL. The designer-in-question is Alison Spear. Somehow she managed to get through school without taking one class in color design. Alison, you look like a nice person, but I think you need to have your eyes checked. And take an IACC-NA color seminar. Fast.

This “kitchen” is a hodgepodge of most of the bad 1970’s decorating tricks you’ve seen: optic yellow with brown and Kelly green, mirrors, slick laminates, transparent furniture, and busy, vomitous wallpaper. I get a headache looking at the small photo; imagine having to actually cook in this kitchen? It looks like something James Lileks would put in his awesome book Interior Desecrations. The color scheme looks cartoonish and the wallpaper will invoke sensory overload in 10 seconds, not to mention cause seizures in even non-epileptics. The sunflowers in the vase on the counter virtually disappear into the wallpaper. The mirrors on the upper cabinets supposedly make them “disappear” into the wallpaper….why you’d want anything to disappear into this wallpaper is beyond me.

I know I’ve mentioned the color urban legend about yellow kitchens causing couples to arguing more…. well folks, I bite my tongue! It’s really true. In this kitchen arguments would develop into full-blown spousal abuse.

But wait, there is more! Make sure you check out interior decorator Joe Nye’s rainbow sherbet sugar explosion of a den and NY designer Christopher Coleman’s living room scheme apparently based on police crime tape. Interesting but not exactly a place you’d want to come home to.

Chow, Reb