Photos by Alyssa Lee Photography
Architecture by Kell Architects
Build by Rascher & Co
Nestled within a 1928 Tudor home in St. Paul is a dreamy centerpiece in powder blue, brass, and birch. A sprightly-yet-sophisticated bathroom is tucked within the home’s seamless new addition, completed in 2025. The addition project is rich with design details that harmonize with each other, and rhyme with other architectural features of the home.
Within the color-drenched bathroom in sage-blue tones lives a quiet symphony of refined design details: carefully laid tile, detailed millwork, romantic brass, and unique archways. The shapely archways, which frame the shower entry and a built-in shelf above the bathtub, mimic the home’s front entryway arch. Even the millwork between the windows is a nod to a pattern picked up from the home’s eaves and gables. Each is a unifying element that helps the new addition fit in perfectly with the nearly 100-year-old home—and the addition’s color story is another.
“We really wanted to elevate the colors throughout the whole owner’s suite, and we wanted to keep the birch elements of the existing room,” explains Meghan Kell, owner and lead architect of Kell Architects. “We actually recycled a pair of old closet doors to really complement that and the Imperial Gray [of the bedroom] and Gray Wisp [of the bathroom] against that rich, darker stain birch.” These two blue-gray Benjamin Moore tones were chosen for their slight, complementary variation, and were taken from the color of the bathroom tile (Rosemary by Fireclay), which lines the shower’s interior and exterior walls.
“The homeowners just fell in love with the bathroom tile when we shared it with them. It’s so watery-feeling, not too intense. Very soothing and soft,” says Kell. Meanwhile, the floor is laid with contrasting, dark tile in a herringbone pattern, playing off the black backdrop of the floral wallpaper surrounding the bathroom windows. Other textural and material elements echo harmoniously throughout the bathroom. Romantic sconces complement the space’s unique arched forms. Ornate brass fixtures, faucets, and claw feet are juxtaposed with the tiles’ clean brass edging and inlay, which gives weight, definition, and structure to the dreamy space.
The Harmonious Whole
The bathroom serves as the focal point of a larger addition project, which earned Kell Architects third place in the 2025 Midwest Design Awards in the Addition Project (Architecture) category. Above an existing porch, rebuilt to properly support the new addition, the team faithfully stitched the renovated suite and new bathroom to the home. By paying particular attention to traditional Tudor design details, and carrying them into the new structure, they achieved a clear unity between the classic home and its new addition.
“We repeated the rhythm of the trim boards so that the addition seamlessly tied in with the existing home,” Kell says. “It had really lovely roof lines to build off of, so it really looks like it belongs. And then of course it’s all nestled onto this screen porch that has some new beautiful arches that go with the character of the home completely.”
[Read this next: “A Tudor Reawakened“]
Forms from the home’s exterior are reflected inside the home, while the interior’s materials and finishes, both old and new, share a special resonance with one another, all thanks to Kell’s careful eye. By tuning into the most charismatic features of the existing home—its birch doors, arched forms, and patterned millwork—and astutely repeating, reflecting, and repurposing these elements throughout the addition, Kell and her collaborators created not just a cohesive addition but a thoughtful homage to classic Tudor charm.
[For more stories about projects from the Midwest Design Awards, visit the spotlights page.]
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