Flower Power for a Toronto Kitchen
See what makes this remodeled galley-style kitchen light, bright and anything but boring
Textural wood is found on the floor and counters. The lower cabinets are a laminate that was chosen for its natural, rustic appearance. All this wood grounds the white finishes and colorful wallpaper, and contributes to the room’s overall minimalist design.
The kitchen has a galley-style layout but is still wide enough for a small custom island. Batson Goldberg wanted to take advantage of the space available here to create an enjoyable, usable bar area where the homeowners could read the paper with coffee in the morning and put out wine and cheese during parties.
Batson Goldberg gravitates toward nature-based wallpapers, especially florals, and is working on designing her first wallpaper collection. For this project, the designer chose Amrapali - Peony from the Designer’s Guild. She fell in love with it when she saw it on a 30-foot wall of a friend’s home in India. “It embodies what design should be: all about feeling, all about how you want to feel and experience your life. If we surround ourselves with things we love, it’s easy to align ourselves with those things in our lives,” she says.
Find floral wallpaper
Find floral wallpaper
Batson Goldberg doesn’t equivocate about the cost of installing a feature like high-end wallpaper. “It actually is art,” she says, and viewing it as such keeps the price in perspective. “People spend money on what is important to them and what makes them happy,” she adds. The amount of joy this wallpaper brings the homeowners provides an excellent return on investment.
One way the designer offset the cost was by creatively repurposing one of the wallpaper offcuts as a framed artwork. Instead of pulling a color from the design and finding a coordinating piece of art, she double-framed a square of the wallpaper in a shiny cobalt frame and a more ornate traditional frame.
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Kitchen at a Glance
Who lives here: A self-employed couple
Location: Toronto
Size: About 350 square feet (32.5 square meters)
Designer: Lisa Batson Goldberg of LBG Interiors
While the home was built in 1888, the kitchen was part of an addition done in the 1960s, and its ceiling is lower than those in the rest of the home. The homeowners wanted the remodeled kitchen to feel light and bright despite its lower ceiling, but they didn’t want it to look plain and sterile.
Designer Lisa Batson Goldberg focused on pairing traditional elements with contemporary ones. A good example is the wallpaper: “It’s a contemporary take on old floral wallpaper,” she says. “It has a digital, arty feel.”