apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Not my style at all, but very well done... Bravo!

the red chair looks incredible against those gorgeous blue walls... what an inspired pairing

but be careful with that fan!

Are there people hiding beneath the bedcovers...?

LOVE the "unabashed" use of color. Your bedroom is my livingroom and i couldn't be happier with the bold choice. great space!

was the proudest DIY shown in the pictures? i was hoping to see what you meant by installing jars under your cabinets.

Love the kitchen that color combo is hard to pull off without looking clownish, its very happy.


That red chair really looks great against the blue.

Funny comment above about people hiding beneath the bedcovers, that just gave me a little laugh!

drooling over the old travel chests in the bedroom and back office. And ditto on the light blue living room complementing your red chair.

I foresee a Fall Colors contest winner.

Oh my God! I LOVE this apartment! Is it OK if I steal your ideas? =)

I like seeing tours that celebrate color. It makes me feel better about my color obsession. Too many design blogs, etc. I read are all about neutral, white, etc. Then I start to question myself and my need for colorful surroundings.

That red leather chair. Magnificent!

Love your sunny-side-up kitchen! The floors are beautiful, too!

I love it. Vibrant and fun. I like the herd of cow creamers.

Not my style at all, but still very well done. I was thinking the same thing that this is a style of what an 8 year old would just love. Colorful and fun.

THat Pez collection is so amazingly over the top - what a scream! The whole place is like one giant candy store, with bright, smiling colours and vibrant energy. I love it, even though I've never ever had the urge to collect Pez boxes...

Colour! what a fabulous thing, and so much more inviting than so-called 'neutral'.

Gorgeous! The kitchen table is my favorite. I love the pattern painted on it.

I'm assuming the Living Room is "The Life Aquatic" and the kitchen "The Darjeeling Limited." All I can say is - "Jealous." I was trying to incorporate both of those rich, saturated colors into my house but you've done a fantastically, fun job! Those aquas, reds, yellows, pinks & greens, de-lish.

This isn't 100% my style, but you've been able to run with it and make it yours. Please, please, please, share your colors. I've been searching high & low for a perfect yellow for my kitchen and I love yours!

Wouldn't mind having that red chair find me. Love the pez collection--did you say how many of them you have?

Love how you displayed the PEZ! My daughter has a pez collection with over 300 pez :) How did you hang them? It looks like poster putty but I wasn't sure. Thanks for sharing your apartment!

Yeah!!! That's an apartment that is "living out loud" as my girlfriend loves to say.

Love the use of bold vivid colors! This is my kind of place! The pez display is clever and that red chair is off the hook!

I appreciate the bold use of color and the definite sense of humor on display throughout the house. I LOVE the curvy hourglass-shaped lamps in the living room and bedroom.

love it. I LOVE the lamp next to the red chair. do you know anything about it?

Effective use of colours this gaudy requires taste, attention to detail, confidence and the wisdom to know when to say "stop". Fortunately Amy seems to have all of these qualities in spades. The house is marvellous.

i second sarrazak's request for paint sources! these pictures made me want to candy-coat everything i own.

...and where are those over-the-bed leaf things from?

Fearless use of color--heck yeah! Thanks for sharing your delightful space.

Your outdoor dining set has me inspired to repaint and upholster my own! I love this house and I wish I had the eye to make something like this work in my space.

Is there a source for that octopus pillow?

Oh, *adore*. Especially the pink table and the red poster against those beautiful walls. There is so much here for me to study, just to see how you did it.

What I really love about this place is the way it's bright and colourful, but it's not cluttered. It's fabulous. Bravo!!!!

Love it when people embrace color full heartedly and make it work! Also...totally jealous of the Pez collection. :)

http://www.modernests.com

I love the way you have arranged everything! You have a great aesthetic sense-- there's something just pleasing about your placement of, say, the arrangement of mirrors. I love the playfulness of your pairings, too, such as the winged frogs over the butterflies! This is also the first color-sorted bookshelf I've seen that doesn't annoy me... it looks like you read your books, you didn't just buy them for their spine colors. Your table painting is so clever, too!

I see an etsy store of playfully painted objects in your future :)

I'm stunned by that red leather armchair against that blue wall. This color combo is exactly what I want to to with my soon-to-be-born baby ! We're going to paint the walls that exact same blue, and wait before decorating. If it's a girl, we'll go exactly that way. So fun and girly and yet totally un-barbie ! LOVE IT !

What fun! I absolutely love it. It screams "an artist lives here", to me.

Not my interior taste but this is GREAT!!!!
Certainly, you should win the color competition because this is the best execution of bold color that I've ever seen.
Feel uplifted and inspired after viewing (twice already).
Always, always wonderful to see inside the home of an artist.

Wow, you are certainly a creative person. I like your house is fun, happy and brave.

Definitely not my taste in design - I'd never be able to relax at all with all the colors going on.

But again, at least it's better than being dull.

Oh, its great! Glad to know that your inspiration was your 8 year old bedroom, at first I thought this WAS a childs bedroom. Seems like you must have had a very happy childhood! Really fun.

This tour made me smile. I love it. It is so fresh, fun and happy in the best way. Love the way you displayed the Pez!

Echoing, not my taste but SO NICE! Very cool, indeed.

I need that octopus pillow! Where did you get it?

Also, love the use of color. So cheerful.

I really love this. I love the color and how personal (and yet uncluttered) it is. The pez wall is inspired. I too wish we could see the jars under the kitchen cabinets! Sounds like a really good idea.

Bravo!

What a happy house -- I really like it. I've been feeling a bit down recently with so many of the white/neutral homes on AT, given how much I like color, so your place really inspires me. Great job -- it's beautiful, neat, and unconventional!

I'm so in love! This would make me so happy to live in!

This is definitely one of my very favorites of all house tours, and yes, I stay away from tan. No tan, not now, not ever!

I love it too...but seriously, what is with that bed in the green room?

SPINELLI2021 - The leaf canopy is from IKEA's kids' section.

Fun house tour!

Wow. This just WOW

A little "fun house" for my taste...especially with the Pez dispensers in the hallway. That's a little much for me, but I man, has she absolutely mastered the art of color-combinations! That aqua and red combo is killer.

I also give her props for displaying such crazy art work in an uncluttered manner. Great post, AT!

cheerful, bright, happy, fun! I suspect these are words that would also describe you...great job!

I'm a little freaked out by the Pez collection and I am not a fan of the leaves over the bed. But, I LOVE everything else! The turqoise trunk is awesome!!

I'd like to try at least one of these wall colors. Can you please let us know what paint colors they are?

thanks...

Would call this style "joyful" -- cannot imagine being depressed in this apartment!

I know some depressed people I need to send to your house for a good case of happy!

LOVE, LOVE LOVE! What a fun and amazing house tour! The blue and red combo is exactly what I'm doing in my new dining room. I was a little hesitant at first but your house gave me a boost of confidence!

Also, love the glass lamps...any info on where they're from?

Absolutely agree with Blandwagon! This is spectacular. I am jealous jealous jealous. I'd like to be able to do as much with strong color and have it work. My own personal style is a different era and different colors, but the lessons to be learned here are universal.

Amy, do you have any particular education or training in the arts or are you just fearless? Is there a lot of experimenting and re-painting or just a lot of planning?

I love this apartment it's so fun and imaginative! I love the bedroom's green walls and the leaf canopy above the bed!

I adore the blue and yellow rooms! And the kitchen table!

LOVE this house - well, everything but the bed in the green room. You are so creative and I really enjoyed this! I love all of the fun furniture!

The red leather chair and otto together is fabulous in its own right, and beyond beyond wonderful in that aqua room.

Seeing this has revived a vision of mine that had faded... In my young adulthood/late-late youth, I worked in a bar off a hotel lobby that featured five smooth leather lounge chairs in various crayon hues. I thought they were so fun and elegant and exciting, and the configurations of those five chairs looked good no matter how we rearranged them.

I'm also echoing the call for details on your wall paint colors, or even the source of your inspiration for those wild colors.

This is fantastic! What a happy, light-hearted and interesting home! You are very talented. I don't know if I could live there permanently, but sure would love to visit for a bit. Seems you couldn't help but be upbeat living in a place like this!

Just caught the reference to, "singing cows." Your creamer collection makes me smile so much! Too fun all around.

Your Pez collection is amazing! I love the way it's displayed. I can only imagine the patience it took to do that! Love how it's arranged by color.

Wow. Just wow.

Amy, you give me hope - you have so many collections, and yet they are all wonderfully curated and organized. If my (unidentied relative) had collected Pez, they would have been crammed into every nook, cranny, and carnival glass bowl throughout the large farmhouse in which I grew up. I'm so delighted to see it can be done - on a large scale - and beautifully.

Um, and I don't know if it's intentional or not, but that lumpy bumpy bed cover is kinda cool in its own right...like a lunar landscape across which all you singing cows can cavort :-)

What a fantastic, cheerful space! I absolutely love the kitchen table, I would love to do something like that (in a different colour variation though!). The librarian in me also loves the way the books are organized by colour - fabulous!

Not sure what it is that keeps this from flying off into kiddieland -- the fact that the owner has superb taste and an excellent eye, perhaps? He/she approaches the edge any number of times but never goes over. Just fantastic. I would live here in a heartbeat but would I attempt such a brave and bold decorating turn? Not on your life.

Hello, this is Amy and this is my place.

Thanks for all the great feedback! I've loved reading all of the comments. There have been so many questions that I wanted to hopefully answer them here, so here goes:

1. The bed....what can I say?, it's a lumpy down comforter and duvet. Its very comfortable but apparently not photogenic. Even my dad emailed me about the lumps.
2. The paint...Glidden, Flat, the bedroom is 'Fresh Lime', kitchen & back room are 'Slicker'(great name), and the living room and hall I actually have no idea, I describe it as Tiffany Box Blue. I picked them all out.
3. The lamps in my bedroom and next to the red chair.....my mom got them for me at a yard sale 2 years ago after I had painted my place, she got the pair for $10. There are no markings on them, they are glass and a great find. She was very pleased they got noticed.
4. The Pez....I have about 400 these days, they are up on the wall with blue poster putty, the stuff is great, it will hold up to 2lbs so Pez is no issue. You can take them off and rearrange, it never seems to really dry out.
5. Someone asked if they could steal my ideas......Please!
6. The red chair & ottoman.....I got them at a yard sale when I was in 6th grade, they've been with me ever since.
7. The Leaves....IKEA kids section, $12 a piece.
8. The octopus pillows.....T.J.Max this past summer.

I hope that answers some of the pressing questions.-amy

"My bedroom at age 8 meets the Home Depot paint center."

I did my place with the same attitude, so I LOVE this!

I love it. I would feel wonderful and light hearted living in your home!

I love it! I would love living here.

Goodness!!These rooms depict a very,very busy mind; almost to the point of being hyper. I love the red chair & I never would have dreamed of putting it together with the blue walls. I,too,am jealous of the old trunks.I didn't care much for the decorating;too much of a hodge podge or myriad of just 'things.' The blue light bulbs at the base of the plant..what's up with that? The kitchen table is cute but reminds me of something for elementary or pre school,which is good for children...a real perky atmosphere. I could never sleep in that bedroom.There's nothing soothing about any of those colors;especially the walls.I'd like to know the ages of those whose post agreed with amy's taste.And how old are you, Amy? All in all, it reminds me of a freshman's first year in college where they bring thier teddy bears, etc. from home to make them not feel so far removed from family.
I prefer theme based decor and this is just not my cup of tea but kuddos to you for making the place "YOU." If you're happy, then everyone is happy.

I adore it

I'm inspired

..and I'm moving in!

if you had described a red and pink table for my kitchen, I'd have said - OH NO - sounds horrible! Picture is def worth a thousand words - i LOVE it. Your whole place makes me happy and usually I post on here about too much "stuff" - but for some reason it all really works!
Completely different from what I usually go for. Love - love - love that red chair and ottoman!!!

Amy, the colorizing of the Pez collection is the most amazing thing I've seen in a long time. Kudos to you for making these difficult-to-display collectibles a major design element!

RamesesMom, I adore these color choices, and have a lot of similar bold colors in my home as well. I'm in my mid-30s. I think it makes you sound more than a bit snooty and stodgy to assume she needs to grow out of it. Also, I believe the two blue "lightbulbs" in the planter are Aqua Globes...you've probably seen them on TV. :)

Amy,
Cheerful color choices!
Particularly considering I am a color consultant, http://www.kaleidoscopecolorconsulting.com your advice is right on target!
"Trust your gut." If you feel your gut is feeling a little queezey, paint a sample first.
"If it looks good to you, then it works." This is true but if it only looks good to you then you need to be confident enough in your choice to ignore any negative comments. It is YOUR home!
"I think the only common theme about my apartment is that I like everything in it." You can't get better than that...lucky lady.
"Stay away from tan."...unless tan is what you like. My first question to my clients that say that "beige, earth tones, tan, white, etc. are their favorite colors is; "Is that your favorite color or is it that you feel safe with it?" Depending on their answer is the direction the consultation will go.
Wishing you a brightly colored day,
Mary

Wow. That isn't a Pez "collection". That's an art installation! Absolutely brilliant. I don't even like Pez but I love, love, love this.

Also love the "moth collection". Another stroke of tongue-in-cheek brilliance.

Love your ability to use bold color without being garish.

Thanks, that was fun to see.

RamesesMom - I'm 40. And I'll never outgrow colour

What a fun, playful home! Well done!!

LOVE x 1000

This is beautiful, fun, energetic, lovely.

And simply amazing :-)

you created a totally fun and interesting space for yourself!
Well done. :)

Amazingly. Like everyone else, how did you mount the pez wall?

I liked the yellow and the pink with the antique trunk.

The display of the Pez collection made me rethink my dislike of Pez collections.

The colors and the grouping of the mirrors in the living room were really well done.

RamesesMom, any room is a snapshot in time. If someone has pulled together a cohesive look that is fun and expressive, why does the age of the owner or the appreciative viewer matter? There's something in Amy's room for everyone.

RamesesMom, I'm 37 with a husband and child and LOVE this "teddy bear" of a room. It's nice to see something other than beige walls and brown furniture.

I absolutely love it!!! I am in love with the octopus pillow!! I'm currently painting my new home, and I think you may have inspired me into adding some colour on to my walls... Thank you so much for letting us see inside you're wonderful home!!!!

So many comments, but had to say I love the use of color. The Pez collection would be great without the heads (think painted dowels?) What a treat.

To quote my neighbor Debbie from the old neighborhood "Damn that bitch must be cray-zeeee. Mhm!"

Amy,

I LOVE that dining set. I can't believe how you transformed that ubiquitous straight-outta-college arrangement into something so fun and original and gorgeous. Major Kudos!

Also... I can't believe you've had that chair and ottoman combo for so long... It makes me lament over the various awesome chairs I've given up over the years, probably since the sixth grade. :( Glad you kept yours!

This home makes me happy just looking at it! There is so much energy and excitment, and I can imagine that every where you look there is more and more eye (pez) candy to find!

My daughter and I love your home. How did you hang the pez dispensers? With nails?

First of all, I'd like to completely ditto 99 percent of the above comments...and to commend you on your design skills...because for the large collection of things (and small ones yet, all over the place) as you have, your place does not look at all cluttered. This is a feat unto itself! The place is immaculate and seemingly clutter free - this was my first thought upon viewing your pictures. I've viewed so many other dwellings of collectors and because they didn't have the creative insight of how to put it all together, their spaces were not appealing at all, just looked like random junk all over. Congratulations on the work you've done and the wickedly wonderful use of colour! I thoroughly enjoyed viewing it.

Your house tour totally rocked! I loved your willingness to use color and your house is truly your own, what a great thing to see a space that doesn't look like everyone else's. As always I am laughing at people's comments, I'm never sure if it matters if its their style or not why not just say cool room, and the it seems like the house tour photos either get criticized for being too perfect or not perfect enough (your comfy down comforter). I love how you display your collectibles and I hope you don't mind me stealing your Pez dispenser collection display idea, my daughter has been collection Pez's for years and I never knew how to show them off! Your space made my day!

What fun it must be to live there!

That red leather chair rocks! Where can I get one? I love that red together with the light blue, that is one of my favorite color combinations. Very vibrant yet calming.
The bedroom looks very soothing and harmonic, I would love to wake up in that room.
I am not crazy about the kitchen tables colors, the combination is a bit to pale, it looks like my grandfathers lingonberries in milk. More saturated colors might work better (or maybe just an accent of a bolder color).

Wow, what an inspiration! I think I don't dare do much more than a little section of my home in this spirit, but how amazing that there are bolder people out there.

(The only thing I'm wondering about is the selection of photos; it got a bit repetitive and there were quite a few from basically the same angle.)