The Kitchen This Home Always Deserved

Before: A busy East Side Bloomington kitchen doing its level best for a household of five — two IU professors, three teenagers, a serious cooking habit, and more houseplants than most people own in a lifetime. The bones were good: tall shuttered windows, crown molding, hardwood floors, a dining room just one (albeit small) doorway away. That said, a renovation was due. The counter space had long since lost the war with the army of small appliances, the pantry was a coat closet down the hall, and the kitchen itself had never quite caught up to the life being lived inside it. Functional, just barely. Beautiful, not yet.

After: Navy below, crisp white above, SYH created a two-tone palette that grounds the room while also making it feel spacious and bright. Vibrant and traditional all at once, this kitchen is right at home in an older Bloomington neighborhood, and also, unlike anyone else's kitchen. The tall shuttered windows stayed of course (the plants needed them), and we also kept the oak floors, chair rail and crown. Every finish we added was chosen, nothing defaulted: the ochre-capped pendants, oak stools with plaid cushions, plaid runner that pulls mustard, olive, and blue together at floor level. The island kept its two levels and its sink, because that was never an aesthetic decision: it's where the cook and her husband meet eye to eye at the end of the day over dishwashing. Good design doesn't redesign what's already working.