Laure Hériard Dubreuil is the very vision of French style. Her effortless knack for melanging pattern, color, and styles has defined not only her personal ethos, but also that of her wildly chic multicity boutique, The Webster, and, of course, her East Village home. Her townhouse, which she shares with her husband, artist Aaron Young, and son, Marcel, is a deft interplay between preserving nineteenth-century ornamental New York and contemporary art and design. Above all, perhaps, it sings electric color.

Laure has always been attracted to places that have a storied soul. Having grown up in Bordeaux, she was drawn to the house’s ornate grapevines carved into the marble fireplace mantels, the detailed crown moldings, and the original floor-to-ceiling antique glass windows with their subtle, wavy irregularities. Designed by James Renwick Jr., the architect behind St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the townhouse itself harkens to another era. She took a preservationist’s view in maintaining many of the architectural elements, but instead of dressing the part, Laure and Aaron use the home as a canvas on which to celebrate and explore their love of contemporary art and twentieth-century design. In fact, the couple initially bonded over art when they first met: Laure’s most treasured contemporary painting in her former home happened to be the work of Aaron’s close friend Ryan McGinley.

Laure is unapologetic in her risk-taking and trusts her eye implicitly—always inspired by the spaces themselves rather than the period specifically. After walking through the home’s original set of iron gated doors, you are greeted by a vibrant red and white canvas by Aaron. It sets the immersive color block tone for the rest of the home, where each room seems codified by color rather than purpose. Red returns in the family room, where a pair of Jeanneret chairs are upholstered in a maraschino cherry–hued velvet, grounded by a strident red rug. In the formal living room, shades of blue, from the sinuous metal swivel chairs by Milo Baughman to the shaggy carpet, reign. The parlor floor living space is a duo of teal and pink, with tiger stripes thrown in for good measure. Her effusive zeal with color simply makes you happy.

Laure and Aaron are similarly irreverent when it comes to mixing metals, which is another signature throughout the home. The first piece of furniture the couple purchased together was Paul Evans’s Skyscraper cabinet, a Mondrianesque meld of gold and silver–hued blocks. This embrace of warm and cold metals recurs throughout the home, sometimes eliciting an art deco mood evocative of both New York and Miami, two formative cities in which Laure has lived and established her business. Collectible pieces, like Brazilian sculptural furniture and Italian 1950s lighting, as well as black glass coffee tables with a Scarface-like vibe, and of course their dense collection of artwork both by Aaron himself and by mentors and dear friends, form the distinctive building blocks of this home. Bold, architectural, and sophisticated, Laure and Aaron’s townhouse is testament to creating a nonconformist space that is most decidedly personal and authentic.

The red room is where the family spends most of their time, and it perfectly encapsulates the antipodal nature of Laure’s brilliance with the mix. While an indestructible leather sofa grounds one wall of the space, a highly collectible Oscar Niemeyer chaise longue, with its sinuous shape, doubles as an on-ramp for Marcel’s toy car collection. It is his favorite spot to play in the house. While their home may look cultivated, nothing is precious. Everything here is a highly personal expression of Laure and Aaron’s irreverent visual landscape, brought to life in vivid color and form.

“It’s the mix that works for me. I collect what I love and trust it will find its place, it is what I’m drawn to at that time. I’m not consciously trying to balance it, it almost always balances by itself.”

“There is a french expression ‘keep the house in its shoes,’ it is a house with beautiful bones. There is a responsibility with having a landmark house and being respectful of the history. It was important to us not to disrupt that.”