This year’s Kips Bay Decorator Show House Palm Beach indulges our tropical fantasies. For the program’s fourth year in Florida, twenty designers have transformed a Mediterranean-style home in West Palm Beach’s SoSo neighborhood into a lush, paradisiacal retreat. You can tour it, either in person or virtually, beginning April 8.
A pair of stone lions flank the curved stairs leading from the brick parking court into the 4,400-square foot house with a red barrel tiled roof. A two-story foyer features a grand staircase with a wrought iron bannister that ties to similar railings and gates sprinkled throughout the property, which fronts the Intracoastal Waterway. Each designer will focus on a single space, from the 30-foot atrium and formal dining room to the five bedrooms and multiple baths.
On the main level, Benjamin Deaton of Benjamin Deaton Interior Design in Lexington, Kentucky, fashioned a casually elegant den, complete with fireplace, in the terracotta tiled floor that opens onto the pool. Lorna Gross-Bryant of Washington, D.C.-based Lorna Gross Interior Design did the dining room in neutrals punctuated by coral-colored upholstered chairs. Boston area designer Mally Skok of Mally Skok Design brightens a corner with a window seat layered in floral prints and a chinoiserie style lantern hanging from above.
Bedrooms range from formal to fantastical. A canopy bed with tailored curtains is the main event in an elegant bedroom that Atlanta designer Amy Morris of Amy Morris Interiors created. Courtney Giles Decker of Courtney Giles Interiors, also in Atlanta, opted for a clean-lined canopy bed set center stage in a bedroom covered in Palm tree wallpaper that brings the outside in.
Brittany Bromley of Brittany Bromley Interiors in Bedford, New York, dubbed her bedroom Les Jardin des Perroquets, the Garden of Parrots. Preppy French parrots. There’s a pink and green canopy bed, a pink loveseat with fringe along the bottom edge, drapery with curvy valance, and a sexy French console table. Finally, Cece Bowman and Lori Deeds of Kemble Interiors, Inc. of Palm Beach concocted a bedroom that can be described as Where the Wild Things Are meets Hawaii with oversize tropical flowers looming and vines climbing the canopy bed like a magical trellis.
The bathrooms are equally inventive and impressive. Alexandra Naranjo of Alexandra Naranjo Designs in Vaughan, Ontario has remade a luxurious bath with a mural replete with palm trees and flowers that hugs a pair of pedestal sinks on brass legs. She also turned a walk-in closet into a boutique-like wonderland with wallpaper that pictures geishas and cherry blossom trees in Easter egg hues and Tiffany blue trim. Tavia Forbes and Monet Masters of Atlanta-based firm Forbes + Masters went in a different direction in another bath, setting contemporary fixtures against a dramatic charcoal and pink stone backdrop.
The month-long fundraiser, co-hosted by the Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club and Boys & Girls Clubs of Palm Beach, benefits 20,000 young people ages six through 18 that the organizations serve between them. Grande dame designer Bunny Williams is the Honorary Show House Chair, with Steele Marcoux, editor-in-chief of Veranda magazine, Ellie Cullman, co-founder of Cullman & Kravis, and designer Joy Moyler, principal of Joy Moyler Interiors, as Design Co-Chairs.
Address: 7417 South Flagler Drive, West Palm Beach, Florida
Dates: The Show House will be open to the public April 8 through May 9, 2021, with an opening day preview reception on April 7.
Hours: Monday through Sunday, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Tickets: Purchase tickets for specific dates and times online at kipsbaydecoratorshowhouse.org/palmbeach
Precautions: The Show House will limit the number of attendees to allow for ample social distancing. All guests and employees of the house will be required to wear masks and health screenings will be conducted for all staff, as well as increased cleaning and sanitation throughout the house.