apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

The small artwork makes me sad. The rest of the "budget" room does look good though.

Love that Fox Fur bolster in the first photo - Too bad there's minimal info in the article on many of the resources.

I love the chair in the budget room, although $850 is more than my budget for redecorating my entire apartment. Sigh. Other than the artwork above the mantle, though, I much prefer the budget room.

The art was still $2200, or nearly half the $4555 total. If the idea was to do it cheaply, why use such a budget buster? You could find similar work for much less.

I prefer the budget room over the indulgent one, save the artwork. I'm certain a large-scale inexpensive print could have been used.

I want to add that I love this approach to the high-low sampling. Seeing the pieces in situe is better then the "style tray" models. (obviously only magazines have the marketing budget to do this.)

I think I could do better than the budget room on half the amount. That art is awful.

I prefer the buget room, but I don't like either one that much. Too many colors and patterns going on for me.

I can believe the high end cost lots o' bucks, but on a budget, I don't think you get quite near the look and it still looks like you paid too much. $5000 for a nook?

Chair: $850
Rug ?
Lamp $90

$940

rug

Throw
Pillows
Art
Candles
Small pot of flowers.
Cube table
Bowl of cheetos.
tinted wine glass

=$3615.

Given a presumed budget ahead of time of $5000, you could blow lots on a rug and a cube table, what it pretty much looks like. I don't really like these "high-low" exercises, because the low is almost always doable lower. I find the accessories here kind of a depressing compromise to stick to this "budget."

Hell, you could recreate the look of that large-scalle painting (which is key to the space, I think) with a $20-30 canvas from Hobby Lobby, some acrylic paint, and a little creativity.

I like the clear "ice-cube" table in the budget room, though, even if at over 300 clams its still beyond my idea of "budget".

jooly x 2.

KTG - the rug is anthropologie - the 4x6 is $268 and the 5x7 is $368. It's actually a good price.


http://www.anthropologie.com/anthro/catalog/productdetail.jsp?_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&_dynSessConf=804241296823114374&id=66007&parentid=DECOR_RUGS_RECTANGULAR&pushId=DECOR_RUGS_RECTANGULAR&popId=DECOR_RUGS&sortProperties=&navCount=1&navAction=&fromCategoryPage=true&selectedProductSize=&selectedProductSize1=&color=grn&colorName=GREEN

Wow, I didn't read the article for the actual breakdown. The art looks like typical kitchen art you could get at BB&B. It's kind of disgusting how much people blow for an effect and not because they like a piece of art. And then not even get it right. Lay some broccoli on a tiny canvas and spray paint the relief, put the money in your pocket. Success!

$4500 for a nook? Really? Not even an entire room- just a nook?

The whole "I could have done that art myself" is a really, REALLY tired argument. The same can always be said of someone else's job/talent/idea.

K T G--

This is just an illustration, an exercise, and editorial assignment. No one blew anything.

The art in budget room is really awful.

(to paraphrase Inigo Montoya): They keep using this word "budget"... I do not think it means what they think it means.

Neither nook is rocking my world. The spaces are overly staged and look like they belong in a store's display window. Was this an actual design or just a lot of pieces arranged to show the difference in cost?

Surely we don't think 4500 dollars is supposed to be affordable, right? Well, I guess when you compare it to 22 thousand it is. Either way, it's all just "eh" for me.

To end on a positive note, I do love the rug in the first photo.

For less than the one of the tiny "budget" art pieces, you could have bought a painting by an art student on ugallery.com. Or a large print from 20x200.com. Spending 2K on "decoration art" isn't very thrifty.

Are you flipping kidding me? Forty-five hundred dollars for eight square feet of room is not in any way "budget."

There is more than one definition to "budget."

@patrick - It's not really "whether you could make this yourself" at issue for me, but that the high$ version of this concept has some neato art, and if you're trying to replicate the look for less, you might be able to find better art, even cheaper. What possesses anyone to spend $550 on each of 4 small, really unremarkable pictures - for a "budget" version?

The paintings were almost half the cost of the original art in the "high end" version, vs. the total cost of the budget version less than 25% of the high-end version of the nook. The montage of four doesn't even look nearly half as nice in the space as the Voelter painting, it looks comparatively almost the cheapest element in the cheap nook. We could have had the nice chair and made paintings with potatoes in the kitchen for almost free.

Actually, if they'd just found bigger art for the "budget" room, the transformation would be much more successful. But why can't they find a green chair? The lamp and the side table are so similar as to be inter-changable.

I prefer the second look. Although I do agree that the smaller paintings are really sad looking (he could have recreated the original himself!), I think the budget look is much easier on the eyes. The high end look is too frenetic and it looks like he threw a bunch of trends together and called it design.

do people who spend $40,000K on a nook eat cheetos?

just asking.

and to cheetos taste good with wine?

and where did that extra $20,000K come from?

I don't like either nook. TOO many colors and eye distractions. I like a solid table to sit at and read with a good overhead light. I don't much care what the room looks like. I'm more concerned with if the book is any good.

both rooms are horrible

Honestly, I adore all that AT does, but to call either of those rooms "Budget" rooms is simply insulting. How about realistic budget rooms?

HA vivbabe, i'm with you!! although to be fair, it applies to much more in the shelter world than just apartment therapy...

I'd spring for that miraculous painting and forget the rest, which seems elementary in comparison.

I don't really care for either but the art selection over the fireplace in the budget nook makes it look like just that - a budget nook.

Wouldn't it have made more of an impact to spend $20 on a a large canvas and some paints and create a new and unique large piece of art?

Love the high-end art! And the less-expensive art! Art makes rooms!

(to paraphrase Inigo Montoya): They keep using this word "budget"... I do not think it means what they think it means.

Let me tell you of the common folk, Inigo. They eat the Cheetos. They like the bad art, these people. Now: Prepare to die!

The high is full of aesthetically interesting object (except that moronic painting) that please the eye and the low is full of blandy-bland. If you don't have money, but you do have good architecture, less is definitely more. I would have painted it white, shelved some pretty books and left it alone.

Utterly vile, both.

They're both OK, but I'm really sick of these "budget" rooms. Are you bloggers at all familiar with working-class salaries? To portray the slightly-less-extravagant room as "budget" is just offensive. I don't at all mind seeing high-end design as long as it's portrayed that way, but stop posting this ridiculously expensive "budget" or "affordable" stuff.

If you have all these thousands of dollars to blow on doing a room twice, why not have the second one be a room that's actually possible on a minimum-wage budget, and then send the extra $5500 to families who are more interested in finding a way to buy groceries than "affordable" $800 chairs?

That rug with that art -- arrgggghhh! (In both rooms.) OK, I definitely support original art, my home is full of it. Art is a matter of personal taste, and collector art that costs a bundle should be the focal point of the room it's in. Meaning, the RUG should look good with the ART.

So, if you saw the high-end room and loved it (as if!) and wanted to replicate it on the lowest budget possible, how would you do that?

You could get a cube table with something like the brushed metal swirls by covering a wooden cube with holographic paper, (or a plexiglass cube, if a bit higher end, swirled with an electric sander, maybe...)

If you didn't want the original art, how about a square yard of wonderful remnant fabric (Marimekko maybe?) stretched onto artist canvas stretchers from an art supply store.

Ikea has some chairs with a similar profile.

The budget lamp is already Ikea.

The small accessories just need to be in scale and have simlar colors/shapes. Many cheaper options or substitutions.

Rugs (maybe this time complementing the art!) can be had from Home Goods and lots of other sources, Craigslist, etc. Or you could make a floor cloth, if the colors or design were crucial.

People here could do this whole look-alike thing so much better -- and since mostly we would really only want to make it look vaguely similar anyhow, the options for substitution expand.

I do think it's kind of an interesting concept, though, to see how well you can match expensive details with affordable ones, so that the impact of the room stays the same. The lamps are a pretty good example. Yes, if you know about these thigs, you can tell the difference. The point is that the cheaper lamp does have similar scale, lines, and overall effect as th expensive one, so if the one is out of the question, the other at least would work out in the design.

It's just really artificial the way these things usually come off. Pretend I just love this stylish grouping in the above picture, but my money's kind of tight until the trust fund kicks in. I tried all the chairs I care to and arrived at one that I feel comfortable in spending $850 for. I'm going for a designer look, so I want an actual table, not a cube of wood laminated with contact paper, so ok, $334. I'm going to make my imaginary budget about $5000 for a corner of my brownstone where I read. That painting sure is splashy. I don't want to look around too hard and find anything like it, so I'll spend half my imaginary budget on something boring, small, and sort of has the same colors. And then we're going to Target for pillows and Cheetos. Winnar!

It's the "imaginary budget" part, really, for a nook, not the cost of the chair, the stupid pile of pillows that were so crucial to the first design, or even the quality of the art.

People like art, I am more in favor of people choosing it with a genuine like for the piece rather than to fill a space, and then spend A LOT of money to fill the space. It's almost brainless how little money you can spend to find something quite adequate and charming.

In this exercise, I imagine the first silly arrangement is fine, it cost a lot of money for nice things and I assume that piece of art was more important to the imaginary person who lives there. Well of course I'm wrong about that, the designer assembled the pieces to fill spaces anyway, and since he's not on a budget, who cares how much they spent on the art. What's important is someone (and this person is still imaginary) said, I want this nook over here to be fabulous, come in under $25k. The artwork is more of a colorful accessory than a treasure. It's just chosen for a more expensive look.

In the cheaper arrangement, it's more apparent we're imitating a look and not so hung up on a fabulous piece of art. I'm less able to comprehend the second pretend client insisting on this art grouping, and then work with what you have left. This art makes the whole set look quite a bit cheaper (and we'll all pretend we can sense 5 times more luxury in the expensive version too). If we had nothing to compare it to, and some reader had just sent in a picture of their reading nook, like say for roomarks, it would look fine, not cheap. No one would guess you spent that much on the art or almost $5000 on the entire thing, or criticize the art. It'd be just fine.

I really like the resourceful answers, to ask the question of ourselves. Not if it's ugly or loud or way too expensive, but how inexpensively could I copy the look and not look amazingly cheap. If you see something you do like, you can definitely think of ways to come under budget, and target your money on the things that are important to you, a comfortable or sturdy chair rather than a similar chair of dodgy quality, art that you really like. We're already doing this all the time anyway.

I think it's important to note that this comparison was done by Boston Home magazine, so any unreasonableness in budget should fall strictly on their shoulders and not those of AT :)
That said, the designer totally phoned this one in - neither room is remarkably well coordinated, and the budget room shows no effort or innovation whatsoever. A lot of creativity and time goes into making a room look great on a budget, and the second setup simply seems to take the clashy, spendthrift attitude of the first and multiply it by exactly 25%.
Lastly, who the hell puts a lamp in FRONT of a chair that you will be reading in, especially one with an opaque shade?

Revisiting this post, I think the thing to take away is not that it's laughably easy to spend $22K, but that art really does make the room. Take the measley "budget" art (in quotes because $2200 is hardly cheap), put it in with all the spendy stuff, and you'd get a room that looked measley. Take the striking art from the high-end room and place it with the "budget" furnishings--or, for that matter, with homemade pillows, Target rug, and a Poang chair--and you get a striking vignette.

My, my, my. Can't we just all get along?

Both rooms are ugly. I wouldn't be comfortable reading there at all.

what bugs me is AT baiting readers by calling one 'budget' and saying it 'only' cost $4500. they know that's a load of cheetos.

a nook. not even a room. c'mon, at least bait us with an actual room, not a half-space.

To everyone saying "You could make that art yourself!":

No, you really couldn't. I don't even LIKE abstract art, but years of episodes of design shows has shown me what utter crap "regular joes" make when they try to fake the abstract look.

Feel free to try if you want to stretch your artistic wings, but don't automatically assume an artist's hard work is crap not worth paying for. You could get basically the same look as those awesome tree branch candlesticks by hacking off a treetop and painting it silver, but that doesn't mean the real thing isn't worth the money.

Kaete - it depends on what it is and how nearly you need to represent it.

The painting on the top picture. If I wanted to "get the look," I wouldn't be too concerned with getting it exact. Make the same colors, maybe make some circles with it, water down some parts. I'm not trying to sell it, I just like "da colors" and sort of wild mood.

The paintings on the bottom picture. I don't know the exact technique, but they look like glorified potato prints. To copy "the look," exactitude isn't even a goal here. If you're going to tell me that some talent makes that dandelion alone cost $550, I will go set up my spin art and tell you it doesn't matter.

But don't even tell me any one of us, with little or no or some or very good painting abilities couldn't make a closer relative of the first painting than the cheaper effort, just to fill the space with an approximate height and movement. We're just talking about getting that look with a lot less money, filling a space with color, not appreciating art. As for the small paintings, splurge on one because it sets your heart on fire, if you must. Buy four to group over the fireplace, you're not even going to look at them very closely.

You call the second option "budget" or "low"? Really? You can not be serious. It's insulting and I would argue that this doesn't reflect the regular reader of AT.

Both are hideous - at any price.

I'm at a dissapointment over the artwork as well, they should have rasterbated the original... now that's budget decorating. It's something within everyone's reach... instead of the usual budget tip - craig's list. :)

Sorry for the confusion (please read the article before perpetuating mis-conceptions) --- "budget" does not mean "cheap" or "affordable". Budget means they designed to a particular price with one room costing about 5x less than the first. No one ever said the second option was affordable and no one person can say who the "regular reader" of AT is.

This is a very relevant excersice in budget(ed) design that we can all learn from regardless of if you like the design or the budget reflects your own budget concerns. I think we all come up with what we would ideally like and then have to work through our own budget to try to acheive what we want.

I agree with the other posts...$4,500 just for a nook is not my definition of "budget". I wonder what he could have done for just $500.

Sorry Wes, but the lead post actually did say it was affordable: "Follow the jump to see the more affordable interpretation...". Plus, the end of the 2nd paragraph says "... down to only $4555", which seems to imply that $4555 is a bargain.

@decorinspiration - I think $500 is pushing it. I definitely think some posters are up for the challenge of destiny and resourcefulness, but it is a reading nook, not a looking at nook.

I'd spend the good or better part of $500 on the chair alone, get a faux-luxe acrylic silky kind of throw from Marshall's and a poster of.. oh, George Clooney. I dunno. I don't need reading glasses or cheetos, I'll drink my wine out of an ordinary glass, just set it on the box of wine (table wine, get it?), and papier-mache some oatmeal cartons to mock these strange porcelain logs that were presented in both designs without substitution of the product. (It's true, you really can live like the rich!)

If someone can find a perfectly comfortable chair similar to what's shown in the craigslist/Goodwill for $50 or under, they can probably make it a lot nicer with the other $450 than I could.

(And by 'nicer,' I am sticking with the exercise that we admire the expensive design and finding ways to imitate the look and designer effect for a given budget; it's not helpful to simply hate it, I don't think.)

Jesus people - open a freakin dictionary.

Budget is an amount of money that is set aside for a certain purpose. Just because it isn't witnin YOUR budget doesnt change the definition of the word.

And they said "more affordable". Which still doesnt mean "cheap". 4500 is a hell of a lot more affordable than 20k

Why not just make your own large artwork? It doesn't need to be professional to be beautiful. I must admit, the lower budget nook is more appealing to me.

Emily

Can anyone tell me what is the name of the paint color being used.

I mean the wall color....thanks

Isn't a nook a dining table with a sectional seating area?