Todd Alexander Romano | | style carrot |

Montage: 40 Painted Built-In Bookshelves (Blue, Green, Black, Yellow, Orange, Red, Purple . . .)

I love the richness of the painted woodwork in these rooms. The tones are of course, much deeper than I would dare to go in my own home. Most of the time. A couple of years ago, inspired by such shelving, I actually had my husband paint the built-in bookcases in our family room a deep purple. It wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t great either. We’ve since gone back to white, with taupey greige walls, compliments of the whole family room re-do. But still, it doesn’t stop me from admiring the work of designers accomplished enough to pull it off, particularly Katie Ridder, who does it with great panache, in monochromatic and highly contrasty spaces, and also, Miles Redd. Which colors do you love best?

Thom Filicia

Lindsey Coral Harper

via Pinterest

Designer Eric Gartner – Photographer Tim Street-Porter

Collette van den Thillart of Nicky Haslam Design

Architectural Digest

Katie Ridder

Photographer Diane Sagnier – The Socialite Family

Jan Showers

Jonathan Adler

Miles Redd – Photographer Simon Upton

Todd Alexander Romano

Domino

Susan Sargent – Photographer Eric Roth

Martha Stewart Living

Techentin Buckingham Architecture

Katie Ridder

Amanda Nisbet

Angie Hranowsky – Domino

Martha Stewart Living

David Kaihoi – House Beautiful

Charles Spada

Inès de la Fressange’s Paris office – The Selby

Corinne Gilbert, Mc&Co. – Photographer Miguel Flores-Vianna

Photographer John Bedell

Michael Richman – Metropolitan Home

Domino

Hus & Hem

Traditional Home

unidentified

Raji Radhakrishnan – Metropolitan Home

Photographer Guido Barbagelata

Montage: 54 Kitchen Banquettes

Our Boston condo is under renovation. One of the features we are adding is a banquette adjacent to the kitchen area. It seems to me that there’s been a proliferation of built-in seating recently. Unlike the booths of the ’70s (I grew up with an orange and white vinyl booth in a kitchen with oversize floral wallpaper that had a gold, brown, and orange plaid border), today’s specimens are sophisticated and sleek.

Ours will be U-shaped (not ideal, but we’re dealing with a tight space), with a pale blue and taupe chevron upholstered seat-back and pale blue faux leather seat cushion. The custom table has a walnut herringbone-pattern top on a restaurant supply style stainless base. I’ll post a photo when it’s complete. (If I’m not dead first.)

In the meantime, here are 54 very fabulous banquettes. In addition, check out my piece “The Haute Seat,” in last Sunday’s Boston Globe Magazine.