Tour a Chelsea Apartment With a Primary Color Palette and Stunning Views

Paola Singer

February 5, 2025 at 8:00 a.m.·6 min read

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The makeover of this apartment in New York City’s West Chelsea area was an educational experience for everyone involved. For interior designer Jessie Schuster, it meant having to work with a very limited color scheme, something she hadn’t done before. “My client really gravitates towards primary colors, and I never thought about color in that way,” she says. “I knew it was going to be a challenge, but I was up for it.” For the client, a fintech expert who was newly single after a divorce, it meant delving into the worlds of art and design for the first time. “He came in thinking he only likes street art or graffiti,’” says Schuster, explaining that she quashed the idea of graffitiing an interior wall. As they worked together, however, his tastes began to evolve. “It was an amazing process where we exposed him to really interesting artists in the realm of what he would respond to.”

Interior designer Jessie Schuster, who founded her eponymous studio a decade ago in New York City, decorated this four-bedroom apartment in West Chelsea using only primary colors and grays—a special request from her client. In the dining room, part of a spacious social area, a wall sculpture by German artist Imi Knoebel packs a vibrant punch.

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This corner of the living room, with open views of the Hudson River, has a second seating area featuring Afra and Tobia Scarpa’s iconic Soriana sofas for Cassina. The mirrored coffee table is by another midcentury designer who worked with Cassina, Gianfranco Frattini.

What resulted from this mutual pushing of boundaries is a modern home with bold contemporary artworks and a strong palette that feels singular. Here, bright reds, blues, and yellows pop against white, gray, or black surfaces. This chromatic strength is somewhat softened by furniture in rounded edges, much of it by midcentury luminaries such as Afra and Tobia Scarpa, Charlotte Perriand, and Gae Aulenti.

A section of the living room, furnished with a Jorge Zalszupin Paulistana swivel chair and ottoman, a custom wood-framed sectional sofa and a Carrara marble coffee table by Gae Aulenti for Knoll. The artwork to the left is a charcoal drawing by Robert Longo, a Brooklyn-based artist whose studio Schuster visited with her client.

Before decorating the home, Schuster and her team oversaw a significant renovation of the property, a relatively new four-bedroom apartment in Chelsea with sweeping views of the Hudson River. Besides remodeling the kitchen and bathrooms, Schuster’s eponymous studio, who also worked with Eric Sheffield Architect and Coleman Contracting, created a primary wing, which now includes a bedroom suite, an office, and a second bathroom off a dedicated hallway with its own entrance. “We wanted to make it feel more grand and cohesive, and to add privacy,” says the designer. The former primary bathroom, which had developer finishes, is now covered head to toe in Super White marble, a natural stone with a dramatic gray striation that adds a sculptural quality to the space.

The rug on the floor of the art-filled foyer is a capsule-shaped piece consisting of two parts attached by straps, custom-made by Apparatus Studio, and the console is by British artist and designer Paul Cocksedge.
Art: Dustin Yellin. Brecht Wright Gander.

Speaking of sculpture, there’s an important collection of works in the apartment, starting with the foyer, where a Dustin Yellin glass monolith depicting a human form sits across from an abstract hanging chair by Rogan Gregory that looks as if it’s made of melted black wax. Just ahead, in the hallway, is an edgy lighting installation by Brecht Wright Gander. “Art is such an important part of what we do, to make the projects more successful and more beautiful,” says Schuster.

The renovated kitchen is the only space in the home with softer beige hues. A quartzite called Taj Mahal (from New York Stone) was used to cover the countertops, backsplash, and island.

A dining nook in the kitchen has a lacquered curvy table from Love House, placed below a Jean Prouvé swing-arm sconce. “It’s one of my favorite rooms,” says Schuster. “I could sit there all day and look out at the Hudson.”

The home’s media room has a wall covered in gray leather tiles from Alphenberg. Behind the custom velvet sectional, on the built-in bookshelves, in an electric-blue ceramic by Finnish artist Kristina Riska.
Art: Kristina Riska/Hostler Burrows

In her quest to turn her client into an art lover, she took him to meet Brooklyn-based artist Robert Longo white he was making a charcoal work that now hangs in the home’s sprawling living room. “We went to his studio, and he was drawing a forest that he remembers visiting,” says Schuster. “It had this amazing texture.”

Since then, she adds, her client has “become quite the collector.” In fact, he’s been buying new pieces for a property in South Florida, which Schuster is in the process of redesigning. On to new challenges, and the ensuing rewards.