Dabito

Marigold walls. Peach-pink shutters. Borscht-red cabinets. A dining room drenched in peacock blue.

This is the home of Dabito, interior designer, colour maximalist, and the man who just reminded every single one of us that beige is a choice, not a default. Featured in Architectural Digest this week, and we haven't stopped thinking about it since.

Dabito built this house from the ground up in New Orleans' Faubourg Marigny, a vibrant, historic, proudly queer neighbourhood where colourful homes line the streets like they're competing for best dressed. And his might just win. A 2,400 square foot, two-storey love letter to colour, craft, and living exactly the way you want to. Herringbone oak floors. Zellige tiles. Elliptical arches drawn from Creole cottages and Italianate architecture. Wallpaper that makes you gasp. Every room a different mood, every surface a decision someone actually made rather than defaulted to.

The thing about Dabito is that colour isn't decoration, it's identity. As a child of Vietnamese immigrants growing up in the LA suburbs, he's spoken openly about how colour became his creative language, his way of telling his own story. And this home? It's that story at full volume. Joyful, generous, brave, and completely, unapologetically himself.

This is what happens when someone refuses to play it safe. When every wall becomes a canvas. When a kitchen cabinet colour called borscht-red makes you rethink every neutral you've ever chosen.

The Wonderland List exists for exactly this kind of discovery. Homes that make you feel something. People who do things differently, beautifully, boldly.

We can't get enough. Can you?

@dabito | Featured in @archdigest