What color makes you smile? Please share your favorite and why you love it in the comments section at the end of the post! For me, the color that makes me smile is Aegean Blue. More specifically Aegean Blue 1885. A Ralph Lauren paint that I fell deeply in love with about 12 years ago. Why? Because it’s the color I painted the wall of my 200 square foot apartment in Gramercy Park in New York City.

That little treehouse of an apartment was where I lived for three years. Tiny in scale yet epic in happiness. While living in that apartment I found myself as a woman and later found the love of my life, Paolo. I absolutely, positively loved that apartment. So why am I sharing this now as part of my Italian Home Renovation blog series? A piece of that apartment came with me to Italy.

Through my nomadic years I have donated, sold, or trashed nearly every material item I’ve ever owned. Yet I kept a paint chip?! Somewhere in the back of my head I must have thought “I’ll need this one day.” That day has come.

Italian Home Renovation | Kitchen Color

Knowing how happy my Gramercy Park apartment made me, Paolo has agreed to let me throw a major splash of color right in the middle of our first home together. You guessed it, Aegean Blue!

Aegean Blue is a bold color. It’s vivacious and happy color. It’s the ocean, the sky, the color of vacation. Painting our lower kitchen cabinets Aegean Blue is a brave choice. Yet I know this color will bring an instant smile to my face in our first home together in Italy. Just like it did every morning I opened my eyes in my Gramercy Park apartment in New York City.

While I am a nomadic minimalist at heart, bringing this small piece of my New Yorker life along with me to Italy is comforting. There are no words to express how grateful I am to have a husband who understand what this means to me. Then again, this is the very same man who created I Want to Lose Myself in You.

I Want to Lose Myself in You is my favorite pieces from Paolo’s Seascapes series in his fine art collection “Colors” by Paolo Ferraris. There is a day in the not so distant future when happy memories of my past life as a single woman living in a 200 square foot Gramercy Park will find a home right next to my current life here in Italy. It’s the day Paolo’s art hangs next to an Aegean Blue kitchen.

Curious what that Aegean Blue wall looked like in a 200 square foot apartment in the heart of Manhattan? Here’s a few old pictures I’ve also kept all these years. Digitally at least!

Curious what the kitchen is going to look like with cabinets this color? Me too! Tune in next week and I’ll share our first renderings of Aegean Blue kitchen cabinets.

Don’t want to miss the fun of our Italian Home Renovating? Sign up to get updates in your inbox.