11 Kitchens With Jewel Tones We’re Loving on the AD PRO Directory (2024)

Calming neutrals and cheerful pastels may always be clamored-for kitchen essentials, but some designers are brazenly letting moody jewel tones take center stage. Juxtaposing deep emerald, ruby, and sapphire hues with expanses of light wood or slabs of cool marble not only elicits visual depth and intrigue, but also makes a distinctive statement in a space that is fast replacing the living room as the hub of casual entertaining. Homeowners are looking for kitchens that are energizing, unusual, and tell evocative stories, like these 11 richly layered rooms—all by designers who are listed on the AD PRO Directory.

Bethany Adams Interiors

It was imperative to the clients that the kitchen, found in the addition to their 1930s Dutch Colonial-style residence in Louisville, Kentucky’s, leafy Audubon Park enclave, forge a connection with the historic main structure. “They wanted dark blue cabinets to work with the existing paint colors,” designer Bethany Adams recalls. “The dining room, for example, is a beautiful mulberry shade.” Keeping that reverence for the past top of mind, Adams selected materials that would naturally be seen in a home from that period but gave them a fresh spin. The handmade backsplash tile and walnut island and accents are “all thoroughly modern,” Adams adds, “but, as building elements, they are repeated throughout the original part of the home for continuity.”

Michael Aiduss Studio Interiors & Architecture

Inside a revamped factory in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood, a newly built duplex devoid of architectural details was transformed into a European-inspired apartment filled with 20th-century decor by Montclair, New Jersey–based “To keep the kitchen from feeling ordinary,” as principal Michael Aiduss puts it, his team lacquered it in Aegean blue—a hue that appears throughout the home on doors for a sense of cohesion—and trimmed the cabinets with gleaming bronze for a chic boutique-hotel vibe. The room buzzes with family activity, but, come evening, it acquires a meditative air when the blue “glows with candlelight,” Aiduss points out.

Chused & Co.

“Cream was too safe,” Jenna Chused asserts, and “I knew we did not want gray or black because we have been seeing that for years now.” Instead, the founder of Brooklyn design firm embraced an ultra-high-gloss burgundy, one of her go-to colors, for the kitchen of a local town house project. Subtly shimmering on cabinetry surrounded by a rustic farmhouse range hood and a floating shelf sprinkled with artwork and cutlery, it’s easy to see why Chused frequently uses burgundy just as she would a neutral.

Avery Cox Design

The owner of this compact, gut-renovated abode (it’s just over 700 square feet) in Austin’s lively Clarksville district revels in throwing dinner parties, so local studio Avery Cox Design ensured that the kitchen could accommodate his bountiful spreads despite its small footprint. “To give a feeling of depth and grandiosity, we opted for Inchyra Blue by to wash the kitchen, making it feel cavernous and substantial and eliminating visual clutter,” principal designer and founder Avery Cox explains. Barstools covered in rust and fuchsia velvet provide the “perfect warm offset,” she adds.

Casagrande Studio

Considering the 1980s were the last time the kitchen in this 1895 Colonial Revival home in Newton, Massachusetts, was renovated, Casagrande Studio knew it was long overdue for an extensive refresh. Undaunted, Cecilia Casagrande, founder and principal designer of the Brookline firm, responded by building a narrative around the owner’s passion for traveling and amassing Turkish pottery and antique rugs. “We matched the cabinet colors to the jewel tones in her favorite Iznik plate from Istanbul,” she shares, noting how that led to showcasing Benjamin Moore’s Yorktowne Green and Farrow & Ball’s Paean Black shades. To coordinate with the green marble counters, Casagrande also incorporated soft green brick Winchester tiles. As an ode to the Iznik pottery’s floral motifs, she adds, “layering the antique rich red rugs was the final burst of color.”

House of Honey

Hearty, kid-friendly surfaces abound in the kitchen House of Honey designed for a young family in Solano Beach, California. The Montecito-based studio renovated the entire 1990s dwelling and, like the rest of the interiors, the kitchen is timeless and contemporary, exuding a playful spirit. “We chose Calacatta Viola marble for its movement and color, which creates an elegant fusion of function and sophistication on the counter and backsplash,” House of Honey creative director Tamara Honey explains. “The deep blue of the base cabinets works as a great complement to the stone, and the ebonized wood floor ties the space to the rest of the house.”

Laun

Preserving the vibrant character of a 1930s bungalow in LA’s Silverlake neighborhood was a priority for local design firm Laun, but so was instilling an organic indoor-outdoor flow across the main level. Crucial to this vision is the kitchen, the visual centerpiece of the home. Most of the interiors are neutral “to balance a series of more maximal, whimsical moments that reflect the owners’ eclectic design sensibility. The kitchen is certainly a perfect example,” Laun cofounder Rachel Bullock muses. Even more imposing than the pink marble island and custom unlacquered brass cabinets is the large green lacquer box, “which functions as a standalone architectural object within the space,” Bullock adds. Morphing from pantry to coat closet to art display wall, it establishes a striking boundary between the dining area and living room.

Prospect Refuge Studio

Gucci’s memorable spring 2020 show was the conceptual springboard to Prospect Refuge Studio’s remodel of a Midwestern midcentury kitchen. Victoria Sass, principal and design director of the Minneapolis practice, was transfixed by Gucci’s “integration of so many time periods and the nesting-doll-like approach to how the ’90s referenced the ’70s through the lens of today,” she elaborates. In particular, she was smitten with the abundance of “medical green” on the runway—so much so that she lets it share the limelight with coppery rust-toned upper cabinetry, a red laminate island that takes cues from Alvar Aalto’s bentwood Artek tables, and a hint of mustard in the kitchen. “All of the colors, though strong, have their roots in the natural world, which allows a conversation to flow easily from the existing wood and stone in the home,” Sass says.

Olivia Song Design

Brooklyn designer Olivia Song likes to begin her mornings with coffee in the kitchen, located in the cantilevered glass-box extension overlooking the garden of her family’s town house. Song’s husband attended cooking school and, seduced by his artful plating skills, she began to appreciate the visual impact of dining. This propelled her to make ambitious color decisions in the room. Rather than pursue the low-maintenance black kitchen she always envisioned, she turned to swathes of deep blue-green that connect with the plants framed through the large windows and “make the countertop soapstone sing.” Oak furniture and unfinished pine joists that “are meant to disappear into the background,” Song continues, offer an earthy contrast, “while the wavy uneven floor reflects light in a glittering effect.”

Summer Thornton Design

One day, Summer Thornton, principal of her eponymous Chicago studio, drove past a fire station and remembers thinking, “What’s more attention-grabbing than red?” Believing that “the all-white kitchen was so popular and overdone for years,” she admits, she knew such a showy palette was the right fit for one of her projects, the union of two apartment units in a vintage high-rise building. “The kitchen was previously a galley with little natural light, but we relocated it and opened it up to the living room with steel and glass dividers,” Thornton notes. Pairing refined oxblood-toned insets with white oak cabinetry was exactly what she needed to “create a space that was handsome and arresting.”

White Arrow

Buoyed by heaps of sunlight, the kitchen that New York studio White Arrow designed in an old Pound Ridge farmhouse just north of the city in Westchester is informed by the pastoral estates strewn across the British countryside. “Our goal was to make the room feel rooted in the age of the home,” says Keren Richter, White Arrow cofounder and principal designer. “As there is a lot of natural light and wraparound windows with views onto the land, we took liberties to utilize a deep blue color from Fine Paints of Europe.” It envelops the beadboard backsplash, walls, and custom Shaker cabinetry, eliciting a dramatic backdrop to the white linen café curtains, white AGA oven, Arabescato marble, and collection of antique ironstone that poetically pop against it.