A Room Within a Painting

Reworking a dated kitchen into a relaxed farmhouse space.

A hand-painted mural designed to wrap the architecture of a Manhattan penthouse, creating a room that feels like stepping into a painting.

Manhattan, New York

Design development, layout planning, and hand-painted mural (with Josie Tipler)

Context

The client admired an artist known for atmospheric garden landscapes and wanted to bring that feeling into their penthouse. The aim was to create a room that felt as though you had stepped into one of those paintings.

My involvement

Before painting began, I developed the mural layout using a 3D design program so the composition could be planned precisely around the architecture — continuing across walls, doors and corners.

Once the layout was finalized, my sister-in-law, (an artist and highly skilled painter in her own right) Josie Tipler and I painted the mural by hand, adapting the style of the artist to suit the proportions of the space.

The mural was planned digitally so the landscape could continue seamlessly across the door.

Trees wrapped around columns to maintain the continuity of the landscape.

Key decisions

• The mural was designed to move continuously around the room so architectural elements became part of the landscape rather than interruptions.
• Trees and pathways were positioned to align across doors, columns and corners so the composition would read as one continuous scene.
• At the top of the walls, a painted sky softens into the neutral ceiling color, allowing the scene to feel open rather than contained.

Carrying the work through

The digital layout was carefully transferred to the walls so the composition aligned as it wrapped through the room. The painting was then built gradually, layer by layer.

Painted sky blending softly into the ceiling.

Outcome

The finished space feels immersive and atmospheric — more like stepping into a painted garden than standing in a Manhattan apartment.

Mural wrapping across the room.