apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Love the white and orange squares - makes the room pop. Orange isn't even one of my favorite colors!

is that CB2 showroom?

very grown up for a recent grad...well done! nonetheless, a bit matchy-matchy for my taste. a cool!

i think this is a really nice start! i really like the orange. with time and collecting a few carefully chosen, much loved, unusual/unique pieces, you will have a great place :) could maybe use another color and maybe a blanket or two for softness and warmth?

I think it is probably the other extreme of different than I would pick for my own place, but well done, consistent, um, passionate I guess? I like to see apartments (even in styles I don't like personally) that don't have weird or awkward spacing or out-of-character choices.... the 3rd picture of the coats looked kind of like a rendering though.

This is a very very small place. However it is BIG, I mean HUGE on color! Simple yet doable. Color in all the needed places.

I'm with Frau , too catalogue and bit oppressive.

Absolutely fabulous. Looks like a showroom? Good job on a tight budget. Shows what all of us can do with a lot of paint and a little imagination. Looks bigger than the square footage. Although a fully exposed bed usually drives me crazy, this one works--especially when the couch is focused away from the bed. There's not a bad note anywhere and the photographs reflect the apartment so well. I can figure out exactly how this apartment works.

The gray walls, even tempered with pops of bright vermillion, are really a downer. It looks like corporate housing.

looks well thought out, well put together--super cool

this place has absolutely no soul. in one second i said "showroom."

Can't help but think this whole entry looks like a rendering...it must just be the quality of your photos.

Our bedroom is black, white and red so the colours are absolutely our style.

The only difference is...our room has personality and looks like we live there.

This is one of the few that I've really liked. I love the bold color choice and clean lines of the space. You're space is only 20 sf larger than mine, but it feels much much more roomy.

I like your style.

Yeah I agree with Frau that it just looked like a CB2 show room. While everything is nice and pretty, it also lack of creativity if you just go buy all the furnitures at similar places and put them together.

It feels lifeless and reminds me of an office space. Just far too matchy-matchy for me and no personal touches.

Do you live in the mall?

I love the clean, bright graphic nature of the space - but I agree that it lacks some soul. (or it's been really well cleaned up for the pix)

Look, I don't really "get" this style from a personal standpoint, but I also don't get the accusations that someone made a space to look like a showroom. Showrooms make spaces to look like a place you'd live if you could afford to match all the pieces in you house, instead of one piece at a time like a lot of the other "eclectic" "modern" spaces that are craig's list dumps. This entrant has focus, knows what they like, puts it together without compromise, and makes their own art to complete the vision. What the hell is wrong with that?

the style doesn't work for me, but i don't know if that is a fair way to judge it. it does look like something done on HGTV design on a dime, which i'm not sure that is so positive. but i think you accomplished what you were going for and you went full out. nice work in that regard.

somehow i would have a headache if i lived here. i'd take a little more "soothing" in the design. just some.

Wow, that's a bold scheme, ruthlessly executed.

If I could suggest a thing, the switchplates and such are all beige, like the walls probably were until you personalized them. Either paint, cover with contact paper or similar, or switch out to something that goes with the mood. If and when you move out, and if and/or when you try to recoup your deposit by repainting beige, you can put them back in like they never left.

It's a rendering! It doesn't look real.

i like it, only because I did my apartment in a similar fashion. although I think it needs more art and more personalization. Your apartment should be a reflection of who you are... and if that's what this is... then more power to you. :)

Its a really cool start, but that orange/red wall is like WOW! I dont know that i could live with that for long before it drove me crazy. I know a lot of the saturation is coming from the flash photos - but even still...

I dont think it looks showroomy, just pared down and sparse: what you'd expect from a recent college grad.

great colors. Nice job

The red is really grating to me. The layout is good though.

i think it's really cute! not my style, but i can see how you like it. and i REALLY don't think there's any need for people to be so rude about the fact that it matches. some people like that, we're all different.

So tired of this colour combination.

I like the use of color, and I like the furniture, but where's the personality? Is this a house or a showroom?

Sorry, I can't deal with the colour combination and the wall to wall... it looks like an overdone hotel room to me. But others like it.

ADORE!!!

Very good start, and really bold use of color. I think what's missing is PATTERN and TEXTURE...in pillows, curtains, rug, artwork, etc. Something to break up all the solid, flat visual surfaces and tie everything together.

I think this looks great. It's bold and bright and the red/orange is such a happy color. I disagree with all the criticism. Just because the stuff in this entry actually matches and isn't all hodge-podge, doesn't mean there's no personality.

I like this one a lot. Not my style, but I appreciate the layout and use of space. I voted super cool.

Love the colors but it veers into the trading spaces category of matching everything to each other.

Looked at this entry twice. Something about this gray just doesn't do it for me. Both colours don't complement each other. In general, well thought out place. Maybe adding another palette will solve the issue. Voting COOL for effort.

Great approach to dealing with an oddly shaped layout-- it's on it's way to being something really nice.

"it's on its way..."

i really like your tall floor lamp in the living room...where'd you find that one?

sorry... i thought this entry was boring. It needs personality.

u nailed it!

You obviously put a lot of planning into the planning of your choices. However, I think it would actually look better if you didn't make and change art to match your color scheme - art and books are so much more intriguing when they are based on your interests rather than your color scheme.

I really liked this. Great colors.

I think this is what happens when people think too much about what their "style" is, or what their set color scheme will be. I would rather see (or live in) a place that is full of things bought because you really like them, not because they match.

Way too matchy-matchy and the colours are very flat. Try using more than on shade or tone of gray and use more texture in your furnishings. Having a cohesive colour scheme is great but you want it to have subtle changes and variations.

I like the colors, but they're a bit overdone, and there is too much cb2/ikea/chiasso going on here... I feel like I have seen every piece of furniture on a sales floor or a catalog. Nothing that is unique. Sorry...

Like others, I wanted to like this more than I did because it makes a strong impression. It does seem to boxy and hard-edged though and, as very corporate raider.

Too Queer Eye for the Straight Guy/Thom Felicia for me.

Great place, a little too much Ikea for my taste, but we all have to live within our budgets. Perhaps the DWR will come. Glad you resisted the thrift store/found item route.

Do you live here?

If I went into a store and bought everything I needed for my apartment in that one store I suspect it would look like this.

I don't believe someone actually lives here.
I think it's a "model" apartment.


Weasel Dearest is Mr. Dangerous

as i look back, this is amazing space. most of u who dont like it are so used to tattered leather curbside couches and upholstered chairs with stains. now that a clean style has come along u feel its out of place. this is actually one of the best entries in this contest. it fits. to say that it is a show room is a perfect execution, because the intention of a showroom is to display the finest choices a store has to offer. and by golly this is nice.

i certainly prefer this over the mis mash that the other entries have.

Love the pops of color! Nice work.

I think it's a lovely and well-done example of minimalism. I don't understand a lot of the negative comments.

Minimalism really isn't my style, but if I were going to do it, this would be an example of how I'd do it. It's well thought out and clean, yet there are still those subtle pops of personal items such that it shows "minimalism" doesn't mean "clear off every surface and have empty space".

That said, I couldn't spend time in this room simply because of the darker grey. I don't like lots of black or gray, and the abundance of all that dark grey would plummet me into a depression.

I need help with lighting. I am renovating a bathroom in Switzerland in a minimalistic style: Grey slate tiles (60x30), nice duo symmetrical bath tub (from Kaldewei), a Balena toliet, a Foster handwash sink (from Duravit) and all my bathroom fixtures are Starck Axom. I am going to put a shaving mirror instead of having a mirror on the wall. I can not put lighting on the ceiling. This leaves me an area above the sink. Any ideas? that are not expensive since I am running out of money. I thought maybe a light box, a shelve with lighting in it, something structural. The problem is that it has to be minimalist but at the same time have substance. Any help would be greatly appreciated

the colors are a little too extreme for me...but i love that you made your own artwork!

I, too would like to see a few more colors; funny, my first thought was that these are my employer's corporate logo colors....maybe that's why it seems unpleasant to me. :)

Very, um, geometric.