THE AGE OF EXUBERANCE

Manhattanite Garrow Kedigian bestows his high-gloss brand of wizardry on his apartment in the legendary Carlyle, and the results are a triumph of color and light.

- SOPHIE DONELSON

Admittedly, he didn't get it right last time.

Garrow Kedigian's old Park Avenue apartment, just a few blocks from this new place in The Carlyle, was memorable no doubt: The Carolina blue library is still an Internet favorite, and the velvet banquette with jangly bullion fringe became a calling card for the designer's louche, playful brand of classicism. But a single misstep-wedging his office in the cramped secondary bedroom-kept the place from feeling like home. “I spend 99.999 percent of my time in my office," he estimates. So in the new place, instead of sequestering his buoyant creativity to the back-of-house, he chose “the brightest, lightest room” for work-and promptly painted it the color of glowing embers as if to show his roaring imagination was back big time.

A 19th-century butler's mirror offers a peek into the kitchen and its brass sheet backsplash. Leather stools, Le Forge. Wallpaper, Christian Lacroix

The glossy foyer with custom-painted scroll and panel border. Campaign chair, Maison Jansen.

Citron walls were inspired by Carlyle banquettes designed by Dorothy Draper for the lobby. RIGHT: An intimate corner dining area with a neoclassical table and velvet banquette (fabric, Clarence House). Artwork, Garrow Kedigian. BELOW: The original wrought-iron terrace doors inspired the living room's black trim.