Master Strokes

Elle McCafrey
Chicago, Illinois

Having grown up in a "large, financially challenged family," Elle spent countless hours pondering her fate and how to overcome the limitations of the metaphorical ceiling above her. The conundrum took a literal turn, and she developed a passion for bringing color to an expanse so often sheathed in white. "People are stuck on the feeling that a ceiling has to be light," Elle says. The opposite is true, she believes: The abrupt shift from a strong wall color to a white ceiling often "argues" with the room's architecture. Instead, she says, "I pull the ceiling into the conversation."

The question wasn't whether but what Elle would do to her kitchen ceiling. She chose this yellow plaid wallpaper from Scalamandré, which picks up the colors of her cabinets and speaks to the geometry of the room's floor tiles.