Bernhardt Design is a leader in contemporary furniture design and it’s certainly proving the point with its new crisp white showroom in New York City. The brand has a strong predilection for modern design, innovation and timelessness, which is reflected in the materials and minimalist design of the recently completed showroom. Located in a rapidly emerging design district just north of Madison Square Park in Manhattan, Bernhardt Design and Bernhardt Textiles occupy the third floor of a Beaux Arts building. The company is one of the newest arrivals to the area with its pristine white showroom created by Rottet Studio featuring lighting by One Lux. The light and bright space is a minimalist detox that “clears your head from visual clutter,” says Lauren Rottet, principal of Rottet Studio. Throughout the showroom Lauren used line and light to manipulate where visitors should look and go. A single Harper chair by Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance grabs the spotlight in the vestibule of Bernhardt Design, adding warmth and texture in one corner. Here 3000K-hued LEDs radiate a glow from a suspended ceiling while light-edged walls highlight the company logos. Hidden LED strip lights tucked into coves in the wall and ceiling outline the volumes of the spaces and lead visitors to the reception area where light is shed over Océane Delain’s bright red Mellow sofa and Monica Förster’s Vika swivel chairs. The reception area wall and desk are composed of monumental slabs of Calacatta marble with hidden LEDs to lighten the sense of weight. The Turkish porcelain floor also has an ethereal quality, reflecting the ambient light. An L-shaped “runway”, or gallery, displays Bernhardt products and textiles, including Ross Lovegrove’s sleek and organic Go chair and various furniture vignettes that demonstrate combinations of form and colour including Mitt chairs, in pink, by Claudia & Harry Washington which are paired with the Code sofa, in blue, by Jang Won Yoon. The gallery lighting was specified to have a 3000K colour temperature to optimise visitors’ perceptions of colour and soft lighting on sheer white drapes provides a neutral backdrop in place of the view. But as intriguing as the use of light is, its role is to allow Bernhardt Design’s products to really steal the spotlight. “Bernhardt recognises that you have to have many light sources, or otherwise the furniture goes dead,” says lighting designer Stephen Margulies. Bernhardt Design is renowned for combining incomparable expertise with luxurious materials and some of the leading lights in design, and its new showroom celebrates this same ethos with attention to craft and detail, allowing the quality of the products to speak for themselves. Visit the KE-ZU showroom in Alexandria to see the Bernhardt collection for yourself  or view the collection online here.