Holiday House designer show house in NYC: Tips and trends

A Vince Lombardi Trophy tops the four-floor Holiday House, the annual decorators' event that opens this week in Manhattan. It is displayed in a room with AstroTurf-covered floors outside a luxe high-ceilinged club room abuzz with flat-screen TVs, National Football League memorabilia and five pieces of Charles Fazzino's official Super Bowl XLVIII 3-D pop-up art.

Designer Ally Coulter chose " 'Tis the Season" for the theme of this sixth Holiday House -- as in the football season, which also becomes a symbol for the disease the designer show house benefits. The event raises funds for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. Photographs of breast cancer survivors in football gear "in the battle of their lives" -- like Woodmere native Iris Dankner, founding chair of Holiday House -- line the staircase leading to Coulter's space in the Upper East Side mansion hosting the event. It's a well-timed theme as the Super Bowl heads for the New York-metro area's MetLife Stadium next year.

Other surprises await those looking for fresh ideas at the show house, where the rooms are also loosely inspired by holidays.

The images in the wallpaper in Manhattan's Weitzman-Halpern Interior Design's bedroom came from an Instagram account -- one belonging to designer Amie Weitzman's 16-year-old daughter. So apropos for the space, called the "Sweet Sixteen" room. With the help of Brooklyn's Flavor Paper, Weitzman and partner Michael Halpern decided to use the blown-up photos from Maya's snaps in black and white on a classic Instagram grid to create a more graphic pattern for the space.

The "Christmas in Casablanca" living room features eight 2 1/2-foot-tall molded silver-based glass sconces uplighting the walls of the exotically sophisticated space. "They are used almost as art objects," says Randy Kemper, who designed the room with Tony Ingrao.

It's in the birthday-themed room of Manhattan-based firm Cullman & Kravis, itself celebrating 30 years in the interior design business with a new retrospective book, a faux leopard cake and 30 bright orange balloons in a cage on the ceiling. There's couture silver, gold, black and pewter woven fabric in the window treatments and pillows, shimmering silver paper on the walls and a shiny gold love seat and chair. "All these reflective surfaces catch the light differently," says Ellie Cullman, who founded the firm.

The "Celebrate the Holidays" daybed room announces itself in a breast-cancer-appropriate pink neon sign. But, really, it's the spray paint that decor aficionados will likely remember. Scarsdale designer Gregory Allan Cramer graffitied the walls of the space, pairing the pink-blue-green-yellow-lime-orange-lavender free-form scheme with well-chosen antique furniture and finely tailored silk curtains.

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