Soft, calming neutrals were the foundation for a renovation with a judicious use of bright colour. The result is a playful interior in a Toronto home suited to a young family of four.

Do your homework. Admittedly, those three little words don’t sound like fun when what you really want to do is take a sledgehammer to your kitchen, but you have to admit, planning and patience pay off when renovating.

The owners of this Toronto house did their homework for seven years before hiring designer Karen Sealy of Sealy Design to transform the first two floors of their 2,200-square-foot home in the Beach neighbourhood. That meant seven years of tolerating a dysfunctional kitchen, rooms closed off from each other and a dated palette of gold and honey colours. “We didn’t even paint,” says one homeowner. They wanted to do it right – once – instead of making do with lots of little projects.

“The house really didn’t represent the homeowners – it wasn’t very family-friendly,” says Karen, who describes the couple and their two young children as fun-loving and laid-back. And it looked nothing like the seven years worth of magazine clippings the homeowner presented to Karen and her colleague Renee Gammon at the outset. “Every room I liked was bright and light, with hits of saturated colour, and every kitchen was white,” says one homeowner. While the former dark rooms were the antithesis of her vision, even worse was the kitchen’s lack of functionality. Lower cabinets had no shelves or organizers, and a peninsula of cabinetry chopped the workspace and breakfast area into two claustrophobic spaces.