apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I'm interested in how that bed frame was constructed. Any ideas?

that's so funny--my first thought also was about the bedframe.

The bed frame is beautiful. The room is hideous. Grandma on crack.

I think this kind of look is much more difficult to pull off than staunch minimalism and like this room. I also have a feeling that the paint is richer IRL.

maybe i'm wrong, but i think it is just two twin-sized metal cots pushed together.

You think the paint color looks like Grandma? Is your grandma Betsey Johnson?

Never has so much pattern and color created such a depressing effect. And why is the entire room padded?

Also, I think sflily is right that the bed is two cheap cots pushed together.

I think Wary Meyers does it better: http://www.warymeyers.com/warymeyers.p.html
(particularly the guest room, it's amazing!)

I think it gets points just for having no big-box store items.

I think it's great when someone isn't afraid to show their personality through decorating.
Minimalism of the sort that is all beige and white screams I am scared of color and I just want to play it safe.
It may be "clean",sleek and elegant, but it can show cowardess too.

I like the patterns; I'm not quite loving the placement of the shelving, but the padding on the walls could be better if it had something to "hem" the top edge, like a chair rail or something.

Agreed, Curtis. I love pattern on pattern, but find it hard to do without having it look a little too hippie-ish for my taste.

It looks unbelievably snuggly in there.

I think the whole room looks a little grandma-y. I tried to see it for its bohemian taste, but there's, like, remember how Shabby Chic it was, precious and a teensy bit rustic, well I just mean old, worn down flea-markety treasures. Fluffy and fresh white paint aged with sandpaper and chains, with pink rosebud touches, as if you fancied yourself born in the wrong era entirely.

This smacks rich of that idea, if not the same color scheme. I find it hard to like a room which fashions itself out of the same preserved attic. The elements are all very pretty, the patterns and colors themselves don't overwhelm me with clashing. It's probably really hard to accumulate and then arrange all those items separately as they probably were. I like bohemian mixy matchy. I'm put off by the fact they look as if some young woman's grandma kicked after living 2 or 3 score with her house exactly the same way since the day after she got married, and then she got all her grandma's stuff and put most of it in her bedroom. It has that anachronistic little lamp on the shelf to the right just so you don't think this is a museum recreation.

You people are really anti-grandma, aren't you?

i think the wonderful thing about the paint color (80's mauve?) is that in conjunction with all the other hues, I am persuaded to like it, when had I seen it by itself, I would have doubted that as even a possibility. I love it when design choices can convince me to enjoy something i've hated my whole life.

Not my style, but if the whole shebang were rendered in monochrome, we'd be praising it for its minimalism. Which makes this an excellent lesson---teaching us how color and pattern make all the difference in the world.

And if you needed to cover up bad walls with low investment dollars and labor, how would you do it?

All I can think about is that stuff overhanging the edge of the shelf over the bed crashing down in the middle of the night. And the padding reminds me of crib bumpers. This room is such a hideous mish-mash of colors, patterns, mismatched and oddly placed objects, all assembled to make sure that not one single thing complements anything else. Probably the most depressing thing I've seen on AT.

Hippie-grandma on crack, but in a good way. It made quite a statement for a teensy room. I think the padded walls are a unique touch to take the boxy feel out of it. Makes me think Red Riding Hood lives here. The wall paint color I would change but I don't know what to. Fun.

I think it does look a tad grandma-ish, but that also is what makes it so unbelievably cozy looking. While I wouldn't want quiet so MUCH color in my bedroom, at the same time, a part of me wants to curl up in that bad with a good book. Using 2 cots as a bed frame is such a different idea too...

"You people are really anti-grandma, aren't you?"

There's a difference between liking a grandma and wanting to romanticize a static point in time by channeling a grandma. I sure wish you'd read for comprehension. I love my grandmother, and I like many of her things. I cherish the items she has passed on to me, but I use them appropriate to myself, not to relive an era before I was born. I definitely wouldn't say my grandmother has terrible decorating taste, but this room is almost certainly of a young woman (whether real or styled for a fictional someone) who travels to the past in her bedroom for some strange reason.

Not sure I like this room too much, but I definitely think I would like the person who lives there.

The bedroom looks like a richly padded jewelry box (very comfortable). As for the bed, just get a weathered trunk to put in front to draw the eyes away. I give it 3 thumbs up!

Thanks for sharing.

And for those who may not share my opinion -- no, I am not color blind or pattern challenged. I think it takes creativity to use an old idea and make it new.

The room seems to have Indian colors to me, not "Grandma" colors. Other cultures aren't as demure as Europeans when it comes to color. I think it looks very expressive and warm. In fact, I'm betting if the same room had a bunch of Ikea crap in it and minimalist design, people would be praising the color as a bold and lively component rather than criticizing it as too old-fashioned.

I agree with others about the bed frame being two cots pushed together. It's the sort of thing minimalists probably would never think of. :-p

To each his own. Thanks for sharing and it's great that AT has the cojones to put this out for all to see. One persons nightmare is another's sweet dream.

I like it. It's warm, cozy and creative. Not my color exactly, I would choose something in a bit different shade. But generally - a brave move that works fine for this small box-like space.

Definitely not "grandma" as you minimalists suddenly turn to when a pattern offends you. It's more Indian with general "ethnic" throw in in my opinion and hardly "grandma".

I love Grandma.

I still don't understand how this looks like anybody's grandma. Both of MY grandmas had MCM, because they decorated their houses in that era. When I see a spare modernist room, I half expect to see someone with a beehive hairdo and cigarette heading out to Bingo.

I am the epitome of Grandma when it comes to design, and this is not Grandma. I like it as far as the bohemian throw-ins, but I wouldn't design the room for myself. The person who sleeps there would always be welcome for dinner, though. ;)

You are right on Antonine! Wary Meyers' living room might just be my favorite room ever.

Lisa - one of my grandmas had about 10 years on the other one, and it made a lot of difference in the style. Getting married in 1929 vs. 1938 makes a difference. Having a different amount of space to live in makes a difference.

The older grandma seemed to keep up with the times to a point while still retaining tons of stuff that looks like the above, it was quite the eclectic scene. I really liked it. The younger grandma (who turned 91 this year) has a more mid-century aesthetic, with a very few things much older. The younger grandma also raised two kids in a one-bedroom apartment and was totally small cool and neat and orderly, no room for sentimental junk, while the other grandma lived in a 3 story.. I guess you'd call it a town house? (I don't really remember it except on the inside) and never threw away a damn thing if it still meant something to someone, the kicker being I was (told I was) too young to tag along when she and grandpa moved into the retirement apartments and get to pick and take what I liked from the house. I sent requests for the dishes and the lamps, which I have. My younger grandma is also gradually giving me some of her things which I like, but they're all a lot more 50s/60s.

I think, while we're at it, grandmas get the "blame" for the look because grandpas get the blame for yelling at kids to turn down that racket, get off the lawn, and for pulling their pants up to their armpits. It's the division of labor of the times.

Correction: younger grandma was married in 1941; I guesstimated based on my mother's birth year which I mixed up with my father's.

Of course, younger grandmas will have different homes. My parents' home is not of this aesthetic at all, for some comparison. Married in 1962, it is devoid of style now, in my opinion. It looks a little bland and updated carefully in non-loud colors- not sleek, not quite "traditional," nothing remains of the various phases my mother went through, not the Danish or the country or that time in between I don't know what that was. So younger people will not associate grandma things the same way. My mother, by contrast, is of an age to be somewhat preconditioned averse to the aesthetic above on the same grounds as anyone else, perhaps moreso.

Some of you would call ME "grandma" as far as age goes, and I like glocal contemporary, minimalism with a zen/international touch. Some classic mid-century modern thrown in. (not this)

My OWN parents and grandparents never had enough money to have an identifiable "style". But none of them decorated with what some of you call "granny" tendencies.

So I'd suggest the shorthand is understandable but kind of stereotyped and incorrect. Not that I care -- I get what you mean when you use the term.

As for the bright color, pattern on pattern concept, it can be done well (although I couldn't live with it) and it can be done badly, and I'd place this room toward but not at the end of the "well done" spectrum. Wary Meyers is closer to the perfect end, and maybe part of the difference is the mindfulness of scale. This room has too many small bits, both patterns and items, scattered too evenly. It would work better, I think, if things were grouped more to make a number of small things read as one larger grouping, and to leave more plain color to offset the busyness.

for being twin cots that just fit in there together, it's uneasy to get in or outta bed with those narrow spaces between the frame and the walls. nice for a picture of some whimsical guestroom, but not really comfy.

If you are going to go for pattern you might as well look at the great traditional designes and do it right.

My psuedo-aunt has a house that I think could be called 'grandma'ish and it is no where near the style of that room. There is way too much color in my opinion to have that title. Well the stereotyped grandma title that is.

note to self - NEVER post pics of the house to AT!

Now, see, y'all have proved the point underlying my "anti-grandma" comment: the stereotype of a "grandma" style is age-ist and sexist and frankly, just plain incorrect. There might - dare I say it - even be a few grandmas *reading Apartment Therapy*. Shocking, right? I know grandmas ranging in age from 45 to 95, and they don't have one single unifying style. It's a really lazy way to describe a style, and an insulting one to boot.

"Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s"
Actually this bedroom look comes from the French magazine Marie-Claire Maison (I think 1 or 2 years ago) and the related article & pictures are available on their website: http://www.marieclairemaison.com/,une-mini-chambre-pleine-d-astuces,200110,227.asp
Voilà !