Kips Bay Decorator Show House in Manhattan

Take some of New York’s top designers, give them an empty room, and tell them to decorate it any way they want. The result might end up being a blueprint to the chicest ideas in home design right now. That’s apparent at this year’s Kips Bay Decorator Show House, which just opened in Manhattan. Nothing is off the table in terms of decorating, from colors to textures to the things to frame them against.

TREND: COLOR

Northport native Brian del Toro, a Manhattan designer, says color is back. In the study he designed, he used a rich tourmaline, which he paired with green, a color that figured prominently throughout the show house.

DIY tip “You have to look at how much light you have in a room, or how little, and what is reflected outside and where your taste is,” del Toro says.

TREND: WALL TEXTURE

To create whimsy in the “Sleeping Beauty” little girl’s room, Manhattan designer Zoya Bograd re-created the rug’s arabesque design on the walls and then “bedazzled it” with more than 500 Swarovski crystals.

DIY tip “It is so simple and actually low cost,” Bograd says. Paint the wall, and then glaze it by blotting with a dry cloth. Stencil it next, using house paint. Last, “glue anything” on the walls, she says.

TREND: WHITE RESIN

“Anything in white resin,” is how Manhattan designer Alexander Doherty describes the latest fad, once popular in 1940s France. In his “A Collector’s Bedroom,” he used white resin lamps.

DIY tip “The environment it should go in should be subtle,” he says. “It needs to work with a neutral background.”

TREND: ART IN THE KITCHEN

"Too Hot to Handle,” the kitchen-breakfast room by Karen Williams and Robert Schwartz for St. Charles of New York in Manhattan, features art, including a photograph by David Drebin. “You spend so much time in the kitchen -- it is kind of a living space,” Williams says.

DIY tip Schwartz suggests displaying anything from family art to local paintings and sculptures.

TREND: ZIGZAG

A colorful version of the chevron pattern finds new life in the custom-made headboard in the “Dreamweave” master bedroom by Manhattan’s Coffinier Ku Design. “It’s very fresh,” says designer Etienne Coffinier.

DIY tip Don’t allow the pattern to overwhelm, says designer Ed Ku. Lighten it up by putting it against white.

TREND: FRAMES
In his library, Manhattan designer Jamie Drake created a floor-to-ceiling lacquered frame layered with an upholstered panel with a painting on top. “It creates a center in a room,” Drake says.

DIY tip Go to your local home supply center and buy crown molding, and create your own supersized frame using materials such as paint, wallpaper or sheets and just about any image in the middle, he says.

40TH ANNUAL KIPS BAY DECORATOR SHOW HOUSE

WHAT A benefit for the Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club in the Bronx
WHEN / WHERE 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays and noon to 5 p.m. Sundays at the Aldyn Residences, 60 Riverside Blvd., Manhattan
INFO $30, which includes a journal and source book; children younger than 6 and pets not admitted; 718-893-8600, ext. 245; kipsbaydecoratorshowhouse.org