Hitting the right color notes is in this designer’s DNA
Drawing on her background in textile and clothing design, Leslie Kalish has brought a new dimension to interior home design by paying particular attention to one detail: color. “Color is the pro-generator of everything we do,” notes the designer, who is a Certified Color for Your Home Color Consultant.
As the design director for Obermeyer ski wear for 10 years, Kalish sat inside a control light box and analyzed lab dips to achieve perfect matches between the clothing line’s various items. “From the hours I spent inside that box, I developed this eye for the undertone, rather than the mass tone,” she explains.
Her firm, LMK Interiors in Lafayette, CA, utilizes a similar control light box that is a neutral gray with five different light settings. “When you put something inside this light box, it changes dramatically,” the designer notes. “We basically do all of our work inside this box.”
LMK has so many samples of tile, flooring, countertops and fabrics that its designers can build entire story boards inside the light box, providing complex woven color stories. “From the tone of flooring, cabinetry and stone, to a piece of art, a textile and finally the color on the walls – the simultaneous reactions of all these design elements should create harmony and beauty,” Kalish stresses.
