Coastal Cottage in House Beautiful

While reading this month’s House Beautiful, I fell in love with this sweet little cottage in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

While reading this month’s House Beautiful, I fell in love with this sweet little cottage in Provincetown, Massachusetts.  Designed by Frank Roop, this home is perched directly over the water and features quite a picturesque view.

House Beautiful Coastal Cottage 1
The cottage overlooking Captain Jack’s Wharf.
House Beautiful Coastal Cottage 5
Designer Frank Roop

The cottage is super small and quaint — size doesn’t matter!  The nautical theme and details throughout the cottage are so pretty and clever.  Although space is limited, with plenty of light and a bright palette, the design doesn’t feel cramped at all.   Roop’s selections of furnishings are proportionate and multi functional to the space and I absolutely love the color palette  -a sea of blue.  The upholstered wall in the bedroom is genius!

House Beautiful Coastal Cottage 2
The living room.
House Beautiful Coastal Cottage 4
Nautical details on the stair railing.
House Beautiful Coastal Cottage 3
Porthole windows set directly into the kitchen back splash.
House Beautiful Coastal Cottage 6
The home office.

To see more photos of the home, visit the House Beautiful website.  You can also read an interview with Frank Roop about this project here.

Photos by James Merrell

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Great Articles in Feb 2014 House Beautiful

The current issue of House Beautiful, February 2014, included some really great features.

The current issue of House Beautiful, February 2014, included some really great features.  Two articles in particular stood out for me; Pretty Spectacular, featuring design by Miles Redd, and In the Grand Manner, featuring design by Stephen Gambrel.  Both articles showed how these wonderful designers used an amazing amount of color.  From Gambrel’s use of peacock blue lacquer to Redd’s bursts of bold colors throughout a Brooklyn residence, the rich color stands out in these beautiful spaces.  The effect is so textural and rich.  The saturated colors create warmth and pure decoration, with tons of pattern upon pattern.

When I design for clients, I sometimes struggle between days of preferring clean, sleek interiors, and then days when I love layering with color and just inundating a room with detail.  What I love about these features in House Beautiful is how they show that Redd and Gambrel don’t sacrifice on quality and their clientele understand that something so perfectly orchestrated can be comfortable and livable.  It is really inspiring!  I walked away from this issue wanting to shake off the winter doldrums and do something bold.

Pretty Spectacular

By Christine Pittle.  Photos by Frederic Lagrange.

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In the Grand Manner

By Mimi Read.  Photos by Eric Piasecki.

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Kitchen Color in House Beautiful Magazine

Various designers, including myself, share favorite kitchen paint colors and describe why we love those colors.

The December/January 2014 issue of House Beautiful contains a great article called Kitchen Color.  Various designers, including myself, share favorite kitchen paint colors and describe why we love those colors.  It’s a great way to remind yourself that the kitchen can be an expression creativity and doesn’t need be be limited to a typical palette.

Amy Aidinis Hirsch Designer House Beautiful

Amy Hirsch House Beautiful

Amy Hirsch Greenwich Design House Beautiful

House Beautiful’s Paint Color App

One of my favorite tools for choosing colors with a client is House Beautiful’s 500+ Paint Colors App.

One of my favorite tools for choosing colors with a client is House Beautiful’s 500+ Paint Colors App.  This handy, visually pleasing app lets you browse colors along the entire spectrum.  The app also puts complementary colors together and gives you related options.  This useful app stemmed from House Beautiful‘s book Colors for Your Home.

House Beautiful’s Colors for Your Home

I find the value of this app comes from the ability to help clients visualize ideas and color interactions.  When I can show my clients their preferred colors next to complimentary hues and examples of those colors in a room scheme, they begin to think about how colors work together and feel confident we are on the same page.

Favorite Paint Colors App
Color App Menu

For homeowners who want to color shop on their own, the House Beautiful app encourages them to branch out from their safety zone and consider colors they may not use on their own.

Choosing from a color spectrum.

The app includes several tools to help choose a color palette.  Color River lets you browse paint colors and read reviews from professionals.  Editor’s Picks features House Beautiful’s top color picks in ten different hues while the Color Personality Tool lets you learn your personalized color based on numerology.  In My Paint Box, you can save and compare paint colors.  There’s also a social aspect to the app that allows you to share your favorite colors via Facebook and Twitter.

My Paint Box

You can download the House Beautiful 500+ Favorite Paint Colors App on iTunes!

 

House Beautiful Kitchen of the Year

I am already looking forward to House Beautiful’s Kitchen of the Year.

I know it’s still a while off, but I am already looking forward to House Beautiful’s Kitchen of the Year.  It’s a great opportunity to see new products and appliances.

Last year’s Kitchen of the Year by Mick De Giulio featured a design that I absolutely loved.  It was so simple and beautiful.

Bright and open with a touch of glamor!
A stunning custom cabinet.
Including a cozy seating area in the kitchen is genius.
Love the casual, mismatched chairs in the dining area.

Another past Kitchen of the Year that made an impression on me was designed by Christopher Peacock in 2008.  His use of CaesarStone allowed clients and other designers to feel OK with using man-made materials.  In general, I think the Kitchen of the Year is a good gauge of the direction kitchen design is moving and which brands are reliable and comfortable for both client and designer.

Christopher Peacock’s kitchen design with CaesarStone.

I’d imagine House Beautiful’s Kitchen of the Year will be on display and open to the public at Rockefeller Center in NYC as in years past.  Show kitchen visitors will be able to enjoy demos and tastings from a variety of chefs, making this much more than a display kitchen.  It needs to be as functional as it is beautiful.

The 2008 Kitchen of the Year in Rockefeller Center.
NY Chef Marc Murphy cooks for a crowd in last year’s Kitchen of the Year.

I can’t wait to see this year’s kitchen!

House Beautiful: Bath of the Month

Being one of my favorite design publications, I was thrilled to have a bath I designed chosen as Bath of the Month!

House Beautiful magazine’s March 2012 issue just arrived in my mailbox.  Being one of my favorite design publications, I was thrilled to have a bath I designed chosen as Bath of the Month!  Here is my interview, done by Mimi Read, with photographs by Lucas Allen.  It was a true pleasure working with them and seeing the article in print!

Here is the article in full, but I suggest you pick up an issue to enjoy from cover to cover!

Mimi Read:  You do know how to frame a view.

Amy Aidinis Hirsch:  We wanted an expansive window to fill the room with natural light, and to make the exterior part of the interior.  We didn’t use a window treatment because it would have blocked the view.  Those lush green woods are like a painting for the space.

That’s a brave move, putting a tub right in front of a huge uncovered window.

The house is at the end of a cul-de-sac — my clients have total privacy here.  That’s a dual soaking tub, so it accommodates two people.  They wanted a bathroom for both of them to enjoy together — a perfect symmetry of his-and-hers everything.  He travels a lot, and it was particularly important to him to have a tranquil space to retreat when he comes home.  It’s their Zen haven.

Cladding the walls and floor in all this honey-vanilla limestone creates such a spa-like feeling.

We chose vanilla limestone because we were going for warm and simple, understated.  Marble would have had too much movement —  all that veining — and that would have competed with what we were trying to achieve here.  The driving force for choosing limestone was the previous floor.  It was Jerusalem gold marble, and it was jarring, not welcoming at all.  This is such a soft, calming color, very gentle on the eye, and also to the hand — it’s quite smooth, not pitted in any way.  And using it everywhere unifies everything.

You’ve even used tilted limestone slabs as vanities.  Why no drawers or cabinets under the sinks?

My clients didn’t want conventional vanities — they wanted something clean and minimal.  They were actually inspired by a tiny vignette of a bathroom they’d seen at Paris Ceramics.  They were there looking, and they really fell in love with the mother-of-pearl on the vessel sinks and the backsplash.  The way the light picks up on it is exquisite.  I repeated the mother-of-pearl tiles in the shower and made it thicker, right at eye level.  It’s definitely the bling.

It’s beautiful the way the mirrored door between the vanities reflects the woodsy view.

The details are so beautiful, too.  The panes frame antique mercury mirror, and the rosettes are hand-carved.  You really notice the beauty because of the sleek, angular simplicity of the vanities.  The door slides into the wall, so it never obscures either of the vessel sinks.  Those sinks are works of art.

–MR