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Combining households with a partner can be one of the most exciting new chapters for a couple—and doubly so when it entails dreaming up a DIY-driven reno. At least, that was the case for Brooklyn-based furniture designer Sophie Collé and her girlfriend Zoe, who re-envisioned Collé’s internet-famous pink kitchen in favor of a modernist-inspired space that suited their shared visions and new life together.
But for a while, the couple simply lived with Collé’s Barbie Dreamhouse “bachelorette pad,” as she calls the space, whose vibey blush tones live on in the Domino home tour archives. “We lived with the pink kitchen for maybe six months to a year together,” Collé recalls. When Home Depot approached her to collaborate on a renovation timed to Pride month, albeit, with a two-week turnaround, she and Zoe jumped at the opportunity.
Before
Collé’s original kitchen was painted in the exuberant shade of Behr’s Peppermint Stick, “The pink kitchen was very much a moment and an era in my life… it was my bachelorette pad, is what I would joke,” she says. The “moment” struck as her roommate moved out of their three-bedroom loft in Bushwick, Brooklyn, leaving Collé free to reimagine the space. At the time, that meant shrugging off the color’s gendered connotations, and embracing “being a semi-serious designer who can put together an entire Barbie Dreamhouse and still be respected.”
The Vibe Shift from Barbie Pink
Once Barbie movie mania hit the mainstream in 2023, Collé knew it was time for her—and the apartment—to move on. So she harnessed her love for primary colors, stoked by a past life working in a museum’s abstract expressionist galleries, a deep dive into the Bauhaus German art school, the De Stijl Dutch art movement, the Memphis Group, and more color-driven art and design movements. “It’s not just a beige house,” says Collé. “ Zoe really loves red, baby blue, yellow, and I do too.” After a generous coating of Behr’s Scuff Defense paint and primer in Pure White, the pink kitchen was no more.
From Uppers to Open Shelving
Swapping the kitchen’s existing upper cabinets in favor of open shelving allowed the couple to better display their beloved collection of vintage and thrifted dishes, glassware, and serving pieces. “I really just wanted them right there, almost displayed like it is a gallery or a museum,” Collé says of her Bodum teapots, Alessi and Dansk serveware, and Christopher Stuart teacups—all of which are displayed on stainless steel wall shelves that speak to her love for Brutalism and industrial kitchens.
A Piet Mondrian-Inspired Tiled Island
For the kitchen island, which Collé covered in Daltile’s Color Wheel Classic collection, she looked to the abstract paintings of Dutch painter Piet Mondrian. But Collé is quick to emphasize that the island is really Zoe’s domain, as the chef of the household. “The functionality is actually something that I really had to look to her for,” she says. Its interior cupboards, which are flanked by a plywood frame of custom shelves built out by Collé, hold Zoe’s collection of cookbooks, pantry goods, cutting boards, and other everyday essentials. The drawers, which are finished with 80s-inspired pulls, hold their dining and cooking utensils.
Miami-Tinged Maximalism
While living with a mini-fridge suited Collé, who, by her own admission, is “just not a cook,” it has since given way to an apartment-sized fridge that rests just out of frame. In place of the mini that once resided in the kitchen, the couple decided on dressing up a rack of wire shelving in a sewn, baja yellow skirt evocative of 1980s Miami beach club culture. “I still like the idea of having a textile, especially since there’s so much metal and so much white,” says Collé, who found the fabric on a trip to Joann Fabrics and taught herself to sew in order to see it through.
