Blue Is a Neutral in This Rainbow-Colored Federal

ABOVE In Tiffany and Louis Mizzell’s Kennebunk library, a damask-patterned daybed from One Kings Lane and a Henry Isaacs seascape blend with walls and woodwork in Benjamin Moore’s Labrador Blue. Color-coded children’s books enliven the palette.

From our Summer 2023 issue

Tiffany and Louis Mizzell’s simple white Federal is easy to miss amid the grand, colorful Gothic Revivals, Italianates, and Second Empires in Kennebunk’s Historic District. But inside, bold paint and layered patterns fill room after room in a giddy splendor worthy of Alice’s Wonderland. “I’ve always been drawn to color,” says Tiffany, whose grandmother painted her childhood bedroom in Eliot an “obnoxiously bright aqua” she adored. “Even on the dreariest of Maine winter days, it can put a smile on your face and make you feel alive.”

When Tiffany, a photographer, and Louis, a software product manager, bought their 1794 farmhouse two years ago, it was traditionally adorned with Colonial colors and Early American antiques. Beyond the furnishings, Tiffany saw “a beautiful foundation that was like the canvas you need to start the art.” With eight fireplaces, a living room with crown molding and corner pilasters, and a rustic kitchen with exposed pine beams and a massive brick cooking hearth, the house is at turns elegant and eccentric. Entering rooms on the second story of the rear ell, perhaps a separate home annexed in the early 19th century, requires a precipitous step down from the hallway. Then there are the supposed ghosts of two men who died here. Although the couple’s cats, reliable sentinels of the spiritual plane, have yet to sense anything other than mice in the walls, Tiffany says.

ABOVE 1) “Blue complements a lot of design choices,” says Tiffany, who chose a custom shade inspired by Benjamin Moore’s Buxton Blue for the kitchen. I’m always changing things up, which I can do because of the foundation of blue.” 2) The backyard boasts apple and oak trees and 100-year-old grapevines imported from Italy. 3) Lime-green chairs from Our Way Antiques, in Arundel, punctuate the screened porch.

To make this stylistic and paranormal potpourri more cheery, Tiffany layered on a send-up of a traditional coastal palette. “I looked up all the historic colors and brought them up a notch with their brightness,” she says. Along the way, professional-designer friends told her to steer clear of the vivid cornflower blues, cobalts, teals, and cherry reds she wound up applying to walls and woodwork. One told her she would never find a wallpaper to pair with the eye-popping jade she used on a fireplace surround, trim, and wainscoting in a guest room. (She did — a powder-blue striped print that defers to the woodwork.) “But I was like, I have a vision. I know this can work.”

ABOVE 1) Yellow and a spectrum of blues, including Benjamin Moore’s Van Courtland Blue on the door, pack a visual punch in the living room. 2) In Oliver’s room, a strong nautical palette anchors a pattern mash-up: Serena & Lily Feather wallpaper, Pottery Barn Kids striped bedding, pillows in lobster fabric by York’s Sara Fitz, and vintage flags from Portland’s Shipwreck & Cargo.

She started in the kids’ rooms, where she figured the line between inspired and wild could be safely pushed. Six-year-old Oliver loves pirates, so she selected underwater colors of the SpongeBob variety, with an electric-blue dresser and mismatched striped bedding and chevron-patterned wallpaper in royal blue and white. Inspired by Instagram posts of Arkansas illustrator Hannah Carpenter’s home, she chose a “risky” pure red for the room’s wainscoting and doors. For nine-year-old Herman, she created a “varsity vibe” with vintage pennants and bigger-kid colors — navy blue on wide-striped curtains and a chevron-patterned rug and brick red on a desk — juxtaposed with trim and a desk chair in the same brilliant blue as Oliver’s dresser.

ABOVE 1) Herman perches on a desk chair painted in Benjamin Moore’s Big Country Blue to match his room’s trim; the desk is from Pottery Barn Kids. 2) A guest-room print by Jamaica’s RJC juxtaposes with trim in Sherwin-Williams’s Jitterbug Jade. 3) A guest room offers another take on a nautical palette, with lobster-print pillow fabric and wallpaper by Sara Fitz and woodwork in a custom version of Cornflower Blue by Behr.

With a rattan sideboard, linen-and-cane chairs, and accents in navy blue and rain-slicker yellow, the living room incorporates materials and colors reminiscent of the family’s previous home in Charleston, South Carolina. In a guest room, lobster-patterned wallpaper and pillows by York’s Sara Fitz vibe with Caribbean-blue woodwork that recalls Tiffany’s time in the Peace Corps in Jamaica. The other guest-room’s jade trim, meanwhile, riffs on the Jamaican flag. “At the end of the day, it doesn’t take much to transform a space,” Tiffany says. “Color can go a long way.”