A Family’s Prewar Apartment Reno Gets Its Inspo From Colorful European Style

The owners of this apartment, who work in the finance and fashion industries and have two young kids, have an affinity for European homes. They like how a modern taste and a vintage style intertwine in those spaces, allowing vibrant colors to hop and skip between each room. So it’s just too bad that they live in New York City. Well, at least in theory.

“Their apartment is located on Fifth Avenue, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan,” Britt Zunino says. “It’s across the street from Central Park.” The couple obviously enjoy an ideal location, and could at least cherish the bygone charms of being in a prewar building. But the place still needed an overhaul to completely align with their taste. So they hired Britt and Damian Zunino, principals of Studio DB and a husband-and-wife duo themselves, to oversee a renovation that would combine the past and present within a palette of bold and complementary shades.

“As a prewar apartment, the walls are made of terra-cotta block and plaster. This makes the relocation of walls and modernization complicated,” Damian says. “Also, the windows in the kitchen looked into an interior court, so in that room it was about maximizing light while focusing the view inward.”

Despite its “great bones,” Britt describes the home’s choppy layout as being of a different era, in which every room was clearly defined to provide a distinction between families and the staff that worked for them. In order to bring the floor plan into this century, she and Damian blended the small staff areas together into an expanded kitchen that has an adjoining bar. “We also created a flexible room, which can be used as a den, playroom, or guest space,” Britt says.