Laboratory of Love

Summer 2026

In the Summer 2026 issue of Traditional Home, we step inside the color-saturated Delray Beach home of Nicolette Mayer and Jonathan Ostrow. Guided by Nicolette’s fearless eye for pattern, palette, and detail, the residence becomes a living expression of layered design, where vivid wallpapers, collected antiques, modern accents, and Modern Matter hardware bring personality and polish to every room.

Written and produced by Krissa Rossbund. Photography by Carmel Brantley

It’s an evolving design experiment in a Florida home that tests what’s new every day. And the results are fabulous.

Jonathan Ostrow and Nicolette Mayer may leave their eponymous business, Nicolette Mayer, every evening, but their work follows them home—revealing itself the moment they cross the threshold of their Delray Beach, Florida, residence. Guided by Nicolette’s color-saturated artistry, the husband-and-wife duo designs and manufactures digitally printed wallpapers and textiles, and accessories that blur the line between work and life. Their boldly layered home is awash in their vivid wallpapers, fine antiques, and modern accents that function as a living laboratory where they experience firsthand the same joy their creations bring to customers.

“Our business thrives in decorative details,” Nicolette says. “Our wallpapers help create grand environments, and our accessories add those little touches that make a home personal. The best way to test them is to live and experience them ourselves.”

Situated on a golf course, the home with classic architecture that includes dreamy living room millwork, curvy window muntins in the bathroom, and dynamic ceilings throughout prompted the couple to tackle a decorative facelift that would pull the house out of its 2003 design origins. The biggest overhaul was its palette—a kaleidoscope of hues, with blue as the leader. The French-inspired facade, in fact, is accented in baby blue through classic shutters. Indoors, blue’s calming presence makes it especially suited to spaces devoted to relaxation and leisure.

In the family room, for instance, cobalt-and-white pillows enliven a slipcovered ivory sectional. Behind the sofa, an acrylic artwork by Nicolette offers a modern counterpoint to blue-and-white ceramics on a console table—an artful nod to the color pairing’s ceramic legacy.

Behind the family room, the bar wears sky blue paint on its walls, softening the bright colors of the barware and beverage bottles that outfit brass shelving units suspended from the ceiling.

“Our home is really a story of statements, where we considered every element,” Nicolette says. “We aim to find the special version of furniture, even shelves like the ones we chose for the bar, far more interesting than built-ins. Everything must have personality.”

Even a guest bedroom, wrapped in one of the couple’s signature florals, guarantees a restful stay with its pale blue-and-ivory complexion. Tempered in color intensity compared with the other bedrooms, it eases into a soft backdrop for traditional Swedish furniture that includes a canopy bed and bench in distressed ivory.

Kitchen Nicolette took every opportunity to elevate decoration in the kitchen. Oversize floral-shape hardware amplifies the luxury of the high-gloss powder blue finish on cabinets. “We both adore being in the kitchen and cooking,” Nicolette says. “And we grow everything—from herbs to avocados to mangoes. In a kitchen where we are going to spend a lot of time, we wanted there to be beautiful elements to see everywhere.”

The crown jewel of most houses tends to be the kitchen, and Nicolette and Jonathan, both avid cooks, insisted accented that theirs, too, wear that title. A barrel ceiling and soaring lacquered cabinets match the glamour of an oversize crystal chandelier. Eager to make a dramatic presentation, Nicolette contrasted the cabinet color with a display of copper pots, pans, and molds that she’s collected for 30 years.

“This combination is timeless, and I like to layer it,” Nicolette says. “My favorite ceramics live in the breakfast room. A pair of tall pagodas and a pyramid tulipiere are so special.”

Through columns and an arched pass-through, the breakfast area makes an ever-so-slight shift on the color wheel by weaving purple and teal into the scheme through another of Nicolette’s wallpaper murals.

While blue emerges throughout the house, the rest of the spectrum is hardly content to sit quietly. Instead, a spirited color rivalry unfolds, encouraged perhaps by a starburst rug of many hues that lays on the foyer’s tile flooring.

In the living room, built-in cabinetry whispers in celery green that Nicolette notes was an exhilarating base for the decor. Like the family room, the space is anchored by a white sofa, though here its pillows in a rainbow of colors play off the energy of a vividly striped rug.

The dining room takes a playful twist with a custom-made table with an acrylic top Nicolette and Jonathan had fabricated in a range of bright tones to rest on an intricately carved gold-leaf base that is both functional and sculptural. On the room’s demilune table, acrylic topiaries from Nicolette’s latest collection deliver a playful take on garden ornaments.

Additional bedrooms infuse vibrance. Four shades of a wallpaper with an Indian motif cover the walls of a guest room, where a four-poster and a French lit á la polonaise provides sleeping options for guests with children. Another bedroom embraces a lively botanical wallpaper in a fashionable trio of purple, green, and pink.

The primary suite marries a bathroom in a pale pink version of the couple’s signature floral wallpaper with a bedroom, where another wallpaper leaves no doubt that confidence lies at the heart of the home’s color story.

Throughout the house, statement wallpapers command attention, their drama echoed by equally arresting light fixtures. A traditional crystal chandelier in the kitchen and brass pendants in the hallway mingle with sculptural modern glass fixtures such as the blossom-shape pieces in the bar and in the primary bathroom.

“The visual tension from mixing weathered antiques with sleek modern forms is uplifting,” Nicolette says. “All traditional can appear staid, and all modern too trendy. The mix of both delivers a fresh balance.”

For Nicolette, creativity is never static. She admits that as her ideas evolve, she finds new opportunities to express them in her home. The latest transformation is a pantry reimagined as a party closet. Anchored by an arched cabinet outfitted with small nooks, the space showcases Nicolette’s tabletop collection that includes place mats, linens, and trays she produces.

“I love fashion, and this house is like a closet with new pieces regularly added from every pattern and category we make,” Nicolette says. “That’s where our creativity comes alive. Our daring is a comprehensive artwork.”

With the bones of their renovation in place, Nicolette and Jonathan treasure the moments when they can bring their decorative babies home.