The design team is currently drawn to muted yellows, dusty lilacs, oxblood reds and earthy browns.
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The choice of colour combinations selected by Vancouver’s Studio Roslyn can come across as slightly peculiar — but that’s the idea.
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Studio Roslyn, founded by Jessica MacDonald and Kate Snyder, has a reputation for interiors that are richly composed, confident and somewhat unusual. Their rooms do not feel decorated, but orchestrated. A colour appears where perhaps it should not, a material feels a little rougher than expected and an unusual pairing suddenly makes sense.
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The studio’s choice of hues can raise eyebrows, which is intentional. MacDonald and Snyder love mixing muddy, earthy, heritage tones with fresher, more vibrant hues, creating rooms that feel balanced, but not predictable.
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“We’re drawn to the tension between the two,” MacDonald says. “Heritage tones carry a sense of depth and familiarity, grounded in something already lived with, while brighter colours introduce immediacy, freshness and playfulness.”
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This contrast helps explain why the studio’s projects feel both nostalgic and current. They have depth, without the heaviness.
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A little friction goes a long way
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The colour combinations are a mix of instinct and editing, MacDonald adds.
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They aim for balance, but not necessarily symmetry or calm. A calm room can be beautiful, but it can also feel flat. A room with friction has life, she says.
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The success of an unusual palette often depends on hierarchy.
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“There’s usually a push and pull between the colours — one anchoring things, the other introducing a bit of friction or surprise,” she explains.
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At It’s Okay, a Vancouver bar and restaurant, Studio Roslyn chose neon pink table edges to offset retro wood tones. At Vancouver beauty studio Umeglow, they used lipstick red, electric chartreuse and pale mint green to contrast warm and cool. The studio also keeps returning to yellow and blue palettes, which it describes as the quirkier sibling of the more familiar orange and blue combination.
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“We tend to place bold colour in moments of close encounter, places you touch, open, or pass through slowly. Joinery, thresholds, shelving, furniture details, stair elements,” MacDonald says.
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This may be useful advice for anyone curious about colour, but wary of going too far. You don’t have to paint an entire room oxblood red to introduce drama. You might place it inside a cabinet, along a shelf edge, in a tile detail or on a single piece of furniture. The colour becomes an encounter rather than a command.
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Colour as composition
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MacDonald says the studio is currently drawn to muted yellows, dusty lilacs, oxblood reds and earthy browns.
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“They’re not necessarily new colours, but the combinations feel fresh again, depending on how they’re placed and weighted within a space.”
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Colour is not just a surface choice. It has mass. It can anchor, lift, unsettle or soften a room. Studio Roslyn’s work treats colour as part of the architecture of feeling.
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“We tend to think of colour less as surface decoration and more as part of the composition of a room,” MacDonald says.
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Playful, not chaotic
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