How To Decorate with VERANDA’s 2024 Color of the Year: Electric Amber
Leave it to VERANDA's inaugural Color of the Year to dial up the decorating drama. Electric Amber, an orange-brown shade, sets interiors aglow with a vivacity that invigorates and a warmth that restores. The color is as nostalgic as it is au courant, as alluring in Russia’s famed 18th-century Amber Room as it is compelling in today’s upholstery, lighting, and artwork. For a design lesson in bringing the hottest new hue into your home, we present eight brilliant examples from across the globe for how to decorate with Electric Amber.
Our radiant Color of the Year casts eternal sunshine over interiors. To wit, late English decorator David Hicks wrapped his St. Leonard’s Terrace dining room in amber, surely sparking lively dinner party conversation. Inspired by the color and patterning of Jaipur’s Durbur Hall, he employed black borders to visually “divide” the walls.
Across the English Channel, Paris’s famed Café Lapérouse, decorated by Cordélia de Castellane of Dior Maison and Baby Dior, offers a romantic destination for sipping Champagne. Ensconcing a cozy café table, golden-patterned wallcoverings and draperies echo the warmth of glowing stars illustrated on the mural overhead.
Interior designer Stephen Gambrel made a similar splash in a pre-war Upper East Side apartment, where he wrapped a cozy seating area off the dining room in a handmade wallcovering by Asterisk Design. As the sheeny wave-like pattern sparkles in the sunlight, it also conjures Electric Amber’s mystical aura.
That playful spirit skips to the Upper West Side, where the owners of an 1895 Victorian townhome challenged interior designer Sarah Lederman to balance the existing brown wood detailing with punchy colors to reflect the young family with three children that lived there.
The family room’s Electric Amber sofa (covered in a Brunschwig & Fils mohair) delivered: “I love that this color feels sophisticated and luxe but also adds a cheerful, sunny element to the space,” says Lederman. She threaded the spirited shade subtly throughout the room with the ottoman’s striped fabric (Ottoline Devries) and the floral Roman shades (fabric, Lake August).
Neutral accents in navy and black support Electric Amber’s starring role in this historic New Orleans home designed by interior designer Shawn Henderson. “I wanted to introduce a rich color palette that was reflective of the spirit of the city,” he says of the roll arm sofa adorned in saffron linen (de Le Cuona). “I love the depths and saturation of the fabric, and I thought the scale of the room could accommodate a bold color like this.” Its power is echoed in artist Nigel Cooke’s Gazing oil-and-acrylic painting beside the fireplace.
Electric Amber derives much of its allure from nature’s majesty. Take Cambridge, Massachusetts’s Peace House, for example, whose design scheme aims to examine the intersection between the human and natural worlds. Interior designer Sybil Gallagher of sirTANK Designs collaborated with Brooklyn-based artist Flannery Cronin to create stained glass panels that simultaneously mimic a sunset and a sitting monk, which glows in the rising and setting sun. "The colors in the stained glass window were chosen to give the viewer a sense of peace. The imagery is supposed to depict a figure in a meditative pose, centered and calm," says Gallagher. The flatter texture of the glass is balanced by warm clay walls.
Another emblematic installation rooted in the natural world offers a warm welcome to guests at Buahan, A Banyan Tree Escape in Bali. Here, an illuminated hand-carved brick wall depicts the process of the resort’s logo from morning until dawn, encouraging guests to immerse themselves deeper into the rhythms of nature.
From spa to speakeasy, Electric Amber lighting sets the mood in a handsome kitchen and bar designed by Dallas-based Yates Desygn. A flapper dress inspired the custom fixture, notes designer Bryan Yates, with a fringe-like installation on the shelving and beaded-necklace inspired string lights hanging from the ceiling. It casts a warm glow across the jewel-like amber glassware, which juxtaposes the darker walnut paneling and olive quartz backsplash.
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