Decorating & Design
April 9, 2020
Designer Spotlight: Young Huh On Her Passion For Bold Color & Pattern
There’s always one room in a showhouse that has everyone buzzing and, in the prestigious 2019 Kips Bay Show House on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, that room was the work of NYC designer Young Huh. She took a tricky third-floor attic full of weird angles and created an otherworldly artist’s studio that made visitors feel like they had stepped into a giant painting. Designed to spark creativity and reflect the imaginary female artist who inhabits it, the studio illustrates just how daring Young is in her own right.
A former student of the Cranbrook Schools in Michigan — a hotbed for creatives — Young then went to law school at the urging of her parents. She clerked at the Supreme Court in New York, but couldn’t ignore the nagging feeling that she was meant for something else. An internship in 2003 with Brooklyn designer Jarret Yoshida, whose work has a clean, Japanese aesthetic, was the first step toward a career in design. Since then, Young has been on a mission to buck the trend for minimalist spaces in favor of joyful, exuberant interiors where colors with names like Paradise Peach and floral chintzes are right at home.
“I think a space should be about joy and pretty things — a celebration of art,” says Young. “I’m really excited that so many younger people are getting interested in traditional decorating: pattern, passementerie, pretty things, linen, entertaining at home, pillows with pattern and color. It’s happy.”
For the loft of the 2019 Kips Bay Show House, Young used Braque wall covering by Fromental. “This was a home for a well-travelled, modern female artist,” says Young. “Designer Matthew Patrick Smyth gave me the most wonderful advice: ‘Don’t look left and don’t look right. Look to your own vision. If you don’t have a unique vision, you have nothing.'”
Although the washstand from New York’s Urban Archeology is new, Young gave this client’s bathroom a heritage feel with a brass faucet, nautical sconces and navy tile.
Grey tones are offset with pops of citrus and whimsical cloud wallpaper on the ceiling in a client’s living room.
In this East Coast bathroom, Young framed the mosaic tiles to create a tapestry effect.
House & Home April 2020
Young Huh