In decades past, colorful sinks dominated trendy design schemes, like baby blue in the bathroom and coral in the kitchen.
But somewhere around the time manufacturers started creating their vessels overseas, color drained from our sinks. We’ve been swimming in a sea of white and stainless steel since then.
Enter Kim Vance and her Dallas startup, Whyte and Company. They’re looking to bring back color into our sinks, and the reception for their products has been enthusiastic.
“We started forming the business in April of this year and did our full proper launch in August in Manhattan,” Vance said. “I also went to High Point Market earlier this year, took some renderings, and met with about 100 people, like House Beautiful and HGTV—everybody went nuts.”
Made of a proprietary composite called Whytestone, these sinks are permeated through with any of 30 available colors, from “Kelly Green” and “Little Red Corvette” to “Silver Sage” and “Tangerine.”
“Four of our colors were developed by nationally recognized designers, one of whom is local, Shay Geyer [of IBB Design Design Fine Furnishings],” Vance said. “She is part of our 2016 Colorista team, and she created the Shay Blue color, a deep cobalt.”
This all started when Vance, who lives in East Dallas, did a Google search for “purple sink.”
“I wanted to find out if there was a missing niche in the market, and there were no purple sinks, not in Europe, nowhere,” she said. “I wondered if designers were still interested in colorful sinks.”
The answer is a resounding yes, if the reception for their products is any indication.
“There’s a growing passion for contemporary design and we’re really trying to create functional art with these pieces,” she said. “People have been taught by the real estate industry to stray away from anything that shows your personality, but this is where you live every day. Life is too short not to brush your teeth in a sink that makes you happy every day.”
Whytestone is a non-porous surface with ground stone minerals suspended in resilient resin to give it a brilliant matte finish. The high-tech resins hold the ground stone minerals in a tight suspension, making it both bacteria and stain resistant. These sinks can also take a beating: they are colorfast with exposure to everyday household chemicals and heat resistant to 365°F. If something happens to chip a Whyte and Company sink, the ding can simply be sanded out.
Manufactured in the USA, the sinks will be available to the trade and through build.com for the public.
“In 2017, we are developing farmhouse sinks, and we’re talking to celebrity chef partners now to do that,” Vance said. “We’re also developing a proprietary sink that’s kind of Gucci inspired—there’s nothing like it.”
Whyte and Company will also be opening a showroom in Dallas, which will also be the company’s headquarters.
“I’ve been in Dallas since 1997—there’s so much opportunity here and our city is vibrant and growing,” she said. “Plus, we are a design hub in the U.S., one of five.”
At the end of the day, Vance said these beautiful, colorful sinks are a “cool kid” thing.
“How cool is that, to have a blue sink in your kitchen or a purple sink in your bathroom, from a perspective of being fresh and new and delighting yourself every day?”
