A Bright, Art-Filled NYC Apartment Boasts Wild Wallpaper

Name: Cory Everett, Dina Sankari Everett, and son Julian
Location: Gramercy — New York City
Size: 800 square feet
Years lived in: 1.5 years, owned

After living for 10 years in a 375-square-foot studio on the Lower East Side, we finally decided it was time to move to a bigger space (which was any space with more than one room). This meant it was also time to retire our mismatched, hand-me-down furniture that we’d owned since college and start from scratch, which was both exciting and completely daunting.

Our new apartment, a walk-up in Gramercy about 20 blocks north of our old place, was originally a two bedroom but had been converted to three, which gave us the opportunity to give each room its own distinct vibe but also tell one story throughout. Initially, we didn’t know the first thing about what our style would be but we knew we wanted it to feel like “us,” so we took inspiration from the things we love: travel, music, and film.

The living room is probably the one we spend the most time in and carries a little bit of the style of each of the other rooms. We painted our accent wall dark grey since we have lots of bright colors going on from the pillows, blanket, and artwork. We love the contrast of the light marble fireplace and the dark wall.

We wanted the guest bedroom to feel a little like a funky LA bungalow, so we went with a big statement by putting up the Palm wallpaper by Cole & Son and filled the room out with some tiki accents. We love how you get a peek of the wallpaper every time you walk by the living room.

Any advice for creating a home you love? We really didn’t know the first thing about how to decorate a home when we moved in here. We spent a long time on Pinterest looking at everything and slowly, slowly making decisions. The hardest part was just to start. When there are seemingly infinite options, how do you decide on one couch? Or rug? I think our biggest concern was that it somehow wouldn’t feel like it represented us, because we never saw one online that felt exactly like the type of place we wanted to live in. The thing we learned is that because your taste isn’t exactly like anybody else’s you don’t have to worry that it will come out feeling just like you, because no one else will make exactly the same decisions.

For the master bedroom we used the Scalamandre zebra wallpaper (from The Royal Tenenbaums) as the starting point for the color scheme of the room. It would have been too much to do an entire wall so we only put it up on the bump out behind the bed as a statement. We kept the bedding muted with splashes of red throughout the room and the pops of green from the plants. The only room in the apartment that has pictures of us is the master bedroom and we wanted something that showed our love of travel so we made a gallery wall with our favorite memories from Canvas Pop.

What is your favorite room and why? Probably the master bedroom. We have been to 15 countries together and created a gallery wall of our favorite photos from our travels.

The baby room was originally an office but we knew that wouldn’t stay that way for very long. Rather than tearing everything down and starting over, we decided to keep his room as a “non-traditional” nursery/film library with the walls lined with film art by Mondo.

Thanks, Cory!

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