How Brooke Voss Used Color To Transform This Home
When Mekea and Tim Duffy moved with their three girls into a new-build home in the quaint Minneapolis neighborhood of Linden Hills, they were refreshingly recharged being surrounded by super fresh, super white walls. But pretty soon, the white overwhelmed and Mekea’s craving for color-and lots of it-kicked in.
"I’m a color addict," she confesses. "But I was so afraid to mess with the museum-like quality of this house." After a couple years of dipping her toes with a few bright pieces here and there while learning to live in an open floor plan where everything had to be cohesive (versus their previous vintage craftsman with lots of divided rooms), Mekea called back her interior designer Brooke Voss and said she was ready to go wild. She wanted to warm up all the white, add some funk, and channel her inner 70s vibe.
Having known one another for several years, the designer-client relationship had graduated to a level where they easily collaborated and trusted one another with design decisions. While walking through International Market Square in Minneapolis, Voss spotted an exquisite Jan Kath rug and immediately said, "That’s Mekea! She’s gotta have it!" Originally they planned on something more predictable, such as a flat weave animal print until Voss introduced this deconstructed floral that felt granny chic vintage yet gorgeously elegant all at once. "I fell in love with it like it was a person, a long lost love I didn’t know existed," Mekea says. "If I could be one thing in this house I’d be that rug." The rug became her textile soul mate, and the couple’s first high-end investment piece. While Voss happily countered it with more affordable accessories, she notes that it undoubtedly informed the rest of their electrically charged, colorful design plan.
"As you grow up and as you start to acquire pieces, you reach a point where you get serious and buckle down and invest," Voss says. "The second you do that, you set the tone for everything else." Part of what they both gravitated toward in that rug was all the black. Mekea quickly responded to the way it balanced all the white, while grounding the room and adding warmth, which she laughs "is especially important in Minnesota!"
They carried this punchy black and white palette into the dining room, which as part of the open floor plan is off the front door yet still in eye shot from the living room and kitchen. Here black became a bold, yet basic element. Ombre drapes waterfall white to dark gray while an oval, black Bausman & Company table delivers classic, traditional lines and fills the large space. Underfoot, a black and white rug adds sophisticated, yet unobstrusive pattern. "We had to look at black as another neutral. It instantly makes the space sharper and more edgy and allowed all the color to work without feeling juvenile," Voss says.
For a splash of grown-up candy colored gem-tones, in came Italian Moroso dining chairs-tubular, geometric, and another instantaneous yes. "I’m not a ponderer, it’s my lucky break. I either love it right away or I don’t," Mekea says. They added art from the local Minneapolis College of Art and Design along with a custom neon wall sign that shines "SIMPLE" and can be seen from the street. Down the hall, a dead space was transformed by Welch Foresman carpenters into a floating bar and buffet, storing china, stemware, and serving pieces and saving the couple trips up and down to the basement whenever they entertain. Wire brushed wood gives a striped effect against a shiplap wall with inlaid copper, complementing the Kelly Wearstler scones.
Two inset nooks were slathered in bright, luxe wallpaper. The entry gleams in golden Christian LaCroix, a menagerie of mystical tarot and playing cards, echoing the nearby vintage metallic dining cabinet. In the back of the house, the mudroom gets a color-drenched tie-die effect with Lindsay Cowels abstract graphic prints. Upstairs the girls each have their own room, full with treasures and more white walls with their own shade of Julia Rothman’s daydream wallpaper on the ceiling. "It offers each daughter their own moment and definition without getting chaotic because the pattern gets repeated, there’s a rhythm to it," Voss says.
Staring at the sky and dreaming is exactly what their mom wants them to do. As a teacher who now works at the University of Minnesota as well as the Wildling, a non-profit storytelling venture for kids founded by her sister, Mekea comes home to recharge. The blank canvas of white walls, floors, millwork, and cabinets was crucial to start with-Voss calls it the secret to their success, adding that "a white box allows you to be big and bold!" Proving a color addiction can be healthy and fun, Mekea agrees, "I needed the flat white palette so I could bring in color everywhere else. My home is my sanctuary, I want it to reflect where I learn, think, and be and I do all that in color."
Follow House Beautiful on Instagram.
('You Might Also Like',)
