Design with South Beach Splash (continued)
Nisi Berryman, founder of Miami’s NIBA Home showroom, conceived a bubbly palette for her 1950s bungalow that suits her personality to a T
"I love the play of violet against the brown. It just seems to work," she says. And the media room, separated from the dining room by chunky-striped curtains, adds shots of Florida's favorite orange and her own cherished pink.
Each room of the house offers new fodder for the imagination and the eye. In the master bedroom, a Moorish-inspired custom headboard sits against a mottled hibiscus-red wall. "The wall started out with me testing colors for the bedroom," says Berryman. "It went from there. The whole wall is hand-done, and it took me forever." The room's other three walls got the more usual roller treatment, but in the deep-pink hue. Indeed, Berryman's enthusiasms -- for color, furniture, rugs, lighting, objects -- all show through. Tucked on the Eero Saarinen Tulip table that serves as a nightstand is a big glass apothecary jar filled with bangle bracelets of all ages, colors, backgrounds and materials; it's one of her personal style trademarks that she was able to turn into an ornamental object for the house. She finished off the bedroom with bed linens from Archipelago in New York City. In the bedroom, as in every other room of the house, bold strokes coexist happily with subtle gestures, and just when you think you've had enough color, there's a cleansing "eye pop" of white -- and then more color. Berryman likes to keep your attention roving around the room instead of fixing on any single object. Her eye for the unusual, both personally and professionally, has allowed her to cultivate unknown artists and bring them into the mix with more- established designers. "I like it to be a little mysterious where everything comes from," she says.
What the Pros Know
"It's a challenge to live with color and not feel like you're in a cartoon," says Nisi Berryman, whose role as owner of NIBA Home has made her one of Miami's most influential design voices. "When you have strong, saturated color, it's important to tone it down with some whites, neutrals and metallic touches." Using color requires a bit of trial and error, she points out. For example, she began by painting her dining room orange -- more than once. "First, it was too sweet," she says. "Then it was too bright -- really coming at you." So she changed it altogether and painted the walls bright purple, which she found to be just right. "With paint, if it doesn't work, it's so easy to do it over," she says, noting that it is the value of the color that most needs to work: "When it gets too deep, the color just starts to recede," she says.
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