Ask any seasoned decorator and they’ll tell you: Every client has their own particular thing. It could be an obsession with the kitchen countertops, perhaps, or simply just a penchant for designer chairs. For a recent project on New York’s Upper East Side by interior designer Hadley Wiggins and architect Anderson Kenny, that concern was color—or rather, how best to render the lack of it.The client, Elanna Allen, is a celebrated illustrator and animation director known for lushly drawn children’s books and cartoons. She shares the home with her husband and two young children. 

To develop the palette for the three-bedroom prewar apartment, Wiggins sought advice from color expert Eve Ashcraft, who has counseled clients ranging from Martha Stewart to blue-chip architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Together, they studied the home’s exposure to natural light: strong and direct in the bright south-facing primary bedroom, and dimmer and more diffuse in the living and dining room looking northwest. 

They landed on a two-tone palette in subtle variations of white, gray, and barely there pale green for the kitchen, living room, dining room, and primary bedroom. “There’s a beautiful dustiness to all the tones,” Wiggins says of the hues, which have the muted quality of a vintage photograph.

Hadley Wiggins came up with a series of carefully balanced tableaux by mixing eclectic antiques with contemporary pieces. In the living room, for instance, she chose a collection of soft and round midcentury Scandinavian armchairs, which she joined with a sharp-edged contemporary travertine coffee table, a brass and oak bookshelf designed by Kenny, a pink marble-topped Queen Anne–style side table, and a set of Charlotte Perriand appliqué lights that resemble sheaths of paper lit from behind.

Hadley Wiggins custom-designed a long wood dining table to match their simple profile, which she then surrounded with subtle organic tones and shapes, like a globe-shaped Noguchi Akari pendant, a floating burl credenza by Ruemmler, and a ribbon-like marble sculpture, which glows in the afternoon light from its perch on the window sill.In the bathrooms, she lined the walls with vibrant paper: A dark red fern motif in the primary bath and an indigo pattern of birds and branches in the guest powder room.