Palm Beach Edit
Designer Suzanne Kasler rewrites the Florida town’s quintessential punchy style in this urbane great room
When commissioned to design this space for the Kips Bay Decorator Show House in Palm Beach this spring, Suzanne Kasler could not help but imagine herself as the client. “I’ve always wanted a house here. It’s where I go to travel and recharge,” she says. Allowing the legendary getaway town’s sense of place to inspire her design, she leaned heavily on the area’s most renown decor elements: rattan, white linen, natural materials and the signature Palm Beach Pink.Â
With those selections in place, Kasler wrapped the large (40-foot by 23-foot) room with the coastal-feeling Sans Soucis by de Gournay wallcovering. “It’s very chic and it blends effortlessly with all those elements that we knew we wanted,” she explains. “I had seen the Sans Soucis pattern a year ago in London and they translated the design into this white, coral pink, yellow and gray-green color palette.” The wall of built-in bookcases prevented Kasler from covering each wall with the de Gournay paper. “This took a lot of creative thinking, but ultimately we decided to paint the bookcase wall one strong color,” says the designer, who decided to use Benjamin Moore’s Custis Salmon for the much delibarated wall decoration. “I study a lot of pinks and you have got to use the right one in the right place. This coral pink was perfect,” she says.Â
“A room this large needs lots of places for everyone to sit and enjoy,” notes Kasler who divided the space into three seating areas around a custom 10-foot long Hickory Chair sofa, a floating sectional and a rattan chaise with a smattering of slipper chairs and antique seating carefully placed about the room. Â
After Kasler perfected the large room’s “architectural envelope” and satisfied her floor plan requirements, she turned to one-of-a-kind pieces to take things up a notch. A yellow-cushioned antique chair from the Paris Flea Market is carefully complemented by one throw and abstract art on the table behind it. “The yellow cushion was another big decision, but it turned out really well for us,” says Kasler who could not help but notice that throughout the show, people seemed to gather and stay a while. “To me that is always a sign of success,” she says.Â