Tony Duquette and Albert Hadley were legendary decorators known for their Old World sensibilities and unapologetic originality. In different ways—Duquette was the ultimate maximalist; Hadley had a quieter sophistication—they redefined the course of American interiors. And they were both on Nicholas Obeid’s mind when he began working on his latest project, a spacious apartment in a mid-1800s Brooklyn Heights brownstone. “I wanted to pay homage to these traditional decorators and other old-school greats in a fresh and colorful way,” says Obeid, a young New York City designer who launched his eponymous studio two years ago. “My client and I had a shared understanding that this wasn’t going to be a safe, boring apartment— definitely not another white box.”
Kelsey Brown, cofounder of the textile brand , and her husband, Alec Simpson, a tech investor, live in this spacious apartment occupying the ground and parlor levels of a Brooklyn Heights brownstone from the mid-1800s. They hired designer Nicholas Obeid to create a traditional yet cheerful space with an eclectic mix of colors. The designer was struck by the ceiling fresco, a celestial scene painted sometime in the early 1900s, and decided to replicate some of its colors. Obeid says he left the walls of the dining room white as a “palate cleanser.” Nevertheless, there is plenty of color in the space, notably in the chair’s velvet fabric from . The tessellated bone table is a vintage piece by Enrique Garcés, purchased on .
“It’s a pretty traditional room, it just has a brighter take,” says Obeid of the reception room. “I mixed in some modern pieces to balance the weight of the more classic ones.” For example, he placed a substantial blue sofa with bullion fringe and two dressy velvet armchairs by Milo Baughman (purchased on ) next to a Lucite-and-glass coffee table from the 1970s (a Pace Collection piece purchased on ). The rug is from and the chartreuse bench is a vintage Karl Springer waterfall model from in Brooklyn. He painted the walls in ’s Heavenly Blue and the wainscoting in Boca Raton Blue.
The reception room’s central fireplace has an elaborate wooden mantel decorated with vintage Chinese urns and flanked by foo dogs. “There couldn’t be a truly traditional space without chinoiserie,” says Obeid, who sought to pay tribute to some of his favorite old-school designers, including Tony Duquette and Albert Hadley. An American mahogany-and-marble table from the 1850s fits in nicely.
In this eclectic corner of the main reception room, Obeid mixed a Jean-Michel Frank sofa upholstered in camel mohair with a lacquered black coffee table and a Hollywood Regency brass torchère. The checkerboard rug is a vintage Turkish piece found on , and the contemporary abstract painting by Annie King was commissioned to match the colors of the space.
Every corner of the two-story, three-bedroom apartment is full of personality, yet there is one particularly eye-catching nook: the so-called “sun room,” a cozy space facing the property’s leafy garden that’s used for informal meals. Here, the designer echoed Duquette’s famed Dawnridge estate in Beverly Hills (an over-the-top residence awash in green), painting the entire room a color called Parsley Snips. To add drama, he created ribbons of green rising from the floor all the way across the ceiling. Vintage rattan chairs with velvet pillows in a burnt orange hue complete the fanciful look.
The centerpiece in the main bedroom is a red velvet headboard with scalloped edges, custom made at . Above it hangs a single decorative plate. “I was playing with scale,” says the designer. “The bed is king-sized, and the plate is very small.” He used three different paint colors in the space: ’s Soft Sky on the walls, Sapphire Ice on the crown molding, and Poppy on the trim, both from Benjamin Moore as well.
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