CHRISTOPHER PETKANAS: By now the whole world knows if you want real, provocative color, you go to Jamie Drake. Does this Manhattan apartment represent a new approach to color for you?

JAMIE DRAKE: As matter of fact I kind of took the easy route this time. The entire place is mostly done in a panoply of greens — forest greens, olive greens, moss greens. They mutate from room to room and in each case are set off by another color — pink in the master bedroom, Prussian blue in the guest room. If it's bright, fresh, lush, and green, I'm attracted to it. In any case, I don't think I ever met a color I didn't like.

This is a model apartment in a modernist landmark call Manhattan House. Since there were no flesh-and-blood clients involved, did you indulge in a bit more fantasy than usual?

On the contrary, it spurred me to think about how someone would actually use the space. I made sure there are places to curl up and read, to gather with friends over drinks, to relax and watch TV. The apartment is very realistic.

Who did you imagine the buyer might be?

A worldly bachelor or couple, a single mother with a sophisticated tween....

What's the one thing you would have liked to change about the apartment but couldn't?

The ceilings. They're not hugely high, only nine feet. Other than that there was really nothing to overcome. The flow is lovely, very gracious.

Rather than white, I see you went to the trouble to paint the ceilings different colors. Why?

Color makes a ceiling seem higher. It lifts your eye and takes the lid off the box. I tend to like ceilings on the light side — light, subtle, and flat. The living room's is painted taffy, a kind of golden beige. The master bedroom's is the pink of a lady's slipper orchid.

Are there any times when it would be wrong to use color on a ceiling?

Yes, when there's beautiful plasterwork. Color would only detract.

In all your years of exploring and thinking about color, are there combinations that you've discovered are hopeless — or worse, disastrous?

There's nothing I can say point-blank, "That doesn't work." But I know it when I see it. With unusual combinations it's all about proportion and application — how much you use and what you use it on. But there are really no rules.

Are there any color experiments you would recommend that the nonprofessional resist?

Absolutely not. Most people aren't fearless enough. The reason there are so many bland interiors is that people are scared.

How easy is it to live with all these colors in this apartment?

Very. They're invigorating but at the same time extremely companionable. Think of newly mown hay, a bright day on the moors....

What was your brief here?

To evoke the era when the building went up, which was the early 1950s, and more specifically the style of one of its early tenants, Grace Kelly. We made a lampshade out of an Hermès scarf, and the tweed on the living room sofa is typical of the fabrics used for women's suits of that period. The ruched silk trim on the sofa was inspired by a Jacques Fath dress Grace Kelly actually owned.

And then, of course...there are all these greens.

Yes, well...the Kellys were very proud of their Irish heritage.

I picture her in the master bedroom in a quilted satin bed jacket and matching eye mask.

That room is very feminine and ladylike — a preppy pink-and-green confection. The lattice pattern of the wallpaper conjures a garden party, and the crazy upholstered chair suggests a throne for a queen — or perhaps a princess. It must have come from some fabulous boudoir somewhere like Bel-Air or Miami Beach.

Obviously you weren't feeling antiques in a big way on this job.

Ninety-five percent of the furnishings are new, and why not? The Louis XVI–style bed is a deliberate, perfectly defensible reproduction that's meant to fool no one. But some of my jobs are 100 percent antiques.

You clearly love neo-baroque forms.

Yes, most of the furniture is rather curvaceous. It has a softening effect on the rectilinear architecture. The living room sofa is inspired by 19th-century tête-à-têtes, forties Hollywood glamour, Ward Bennett's famous capsule-shaped sofa of the sixties. It makes a huge statement.

Even with all the vintage references, the apartment still feels very current.

A lot of that has to do with the artwork. I have a passion for contemporary art. I love the triptych of collages in the guest room because of the brash way it expresses teen angst.

What inspired the scheme in that room?

It started with the throw pillows. They're a 2008 interpretation of a 1960s version of a classic 18th-century flame stitch. What could be more today? There's poison green and turquoise in them, but also a little of that deep, inky blue you see in the raffia wall covering.

You treated the living and dining rooms as one space. Was there no other solution?

In a situation like this, with an open plan, I want cohesiveness and a single set of ideas to carry through. So the lampas on the sofa's throw pillows turns up again as a fully skirted and fringed tablecloth. And the striped cotton curtains are identical.

I think of the pouf as one of your signatures.

I suppose it is. I use it as a centering device to connect the various groups in a seating arrangement. It encourages people to swivel around, lean in, and join the conversation.

The plain white silk you used to cover it is pretty un-Jamie.

It relates to the crispness of the molding and fibers in the tweed on the sofa. The eye in any case always needs a place to stop and rest.