A Walk Through Kips Bay: Surfaces & Stories
A love letter to texture, craftsmanship, and the rooms that linger long after you’ve left them.
On the last day of its exhibition, I made my way through the doors of the Kips Bay Decorator Show House in New York — that annual pilgrimage for design lovers where fantasy and craftsmanship meet under one roof. Each year, a different townhouse becomes a canvas, and the country’s top designers are invited to transform its rooms into living works of art. What began as a fundraiser for the Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club has become something closer to design theatre — fleeting, immersive, and unforgettable.
This year’s house — a 1900s Greenwich Village townhouse — felt like a beautiful secret: six floors of unexpected juxtapositions, from whisper-soft neutrals to rooms that glowed like midnight. Every surface seemed to tell a story, a reminder that good design isn’t just seen; it’s felt.
As I wandered through the rooms, I found myself drawn to four spaces in particular — each so different, and united with texture and storytelling. They’re the rooms that lingered with me long after leaving, the ones that made me look closer at how surface and mood intertwine.
The Living Room by Branca Inc
Walking into this room felt like arriving in a calm, elegantly restrained space that still whispers luxury. The palette is beautifully neutral — warm beiges, soft ivories, gentle taupes — letting texture and material do the talking.
What I loved: a monumental ~12-foot sofa that dominates the room in a gracious way, drawing you into the space and inviting lingering. Greek pottery (ancient form, timeless shape) is used as accent elements, giving the room a sense of history. Then the hand-painted wallpaper: at first glance, you believe you’re seeing wood panelled walls — the grain, the color, the detail — but it’s wallpaper cleverly painted to resemble wood walls.
In short: a serene room, beautifully layered, where subtlety speaks volumes.
The Dining Room by Corey Damen Jenkins
This space, by contrast, leaned into drama and storytelling. The chinoiserie wallpaper wraps the room — its classic motifs imbued with narrative — and then above, on the ceiling, that pattern is re-interpreted in pixelated form. That clever architectural twist — pattern on the walls, pattern on the ceiling, one literal, one reinterpretation — felt fresh and unexpected.
I could imagine dinner here being an experience: the wallpaper envelops, the ceiling draws your eye up, and the mix of tradition + digital abstraction gives the room a layered complexity. A surface story told in multiple dimensions.
The Den by Andrea Schumacher Interiors
Dark, moody, seductive — the kind of room that glows at dusk. Schumacher’s den was layered and unapologetically dramatic, the surfaces rich and immersive. The showstopper: a rhino bar, part sculpture, part conversation starter. Everything about the room felt personal and a little mysterious, as if it had been there forever, collecting stories over cocktails.
The Living Space by Huniford Design Studio
Finally, the top-floor loft living space by Huniford Design Studio stood out for its material choice: cork wallpaper. This is one of those surfaces that few people think about at first, but once you see it, you realise how strong it is. The cork gives warmth, subtle texture, acoustic softness, and visual depth. In this urban townhouse that could easily feel formal, the cork brings a grounding for a memorable surface moment.
Leaving Kips Bay, I kept thinking about how these designers use surface to translate emotion — paint, paper, fabric, and finish as extensions of feeling. Whether a room whispers or roars, it’s the texture that makes it real.
That’s the story we’re trying to tell at Post House, too: that every surface holds a pulse, a history, a quiet kind of power.
