The Latest: 2026

Even if you use every cleaning hack in the book, it’s hard to make laundry fun. That goes double when you’re surrounded by blah finishes. If you’re getting tired of staring at the walls of your own laundry room, take inspiration from Ela Bobak‘s gorgeous redo—pulled together from a space that was boring at best.After Ela and her husband purchased their home in 2019, they spent about five months renovating a bunch of rooms, including their laundry room.

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: You don’t have to spend a fortune to make a huge impact. That’s especially true for bathrooms, which are easy spaces to transform on a budget (and on a deadline). Kelly von Weber had already given her guest bathroom a bit of color and charm a few years back, but as time went on, she realized her tastes had changed.

Bathrooms can sometimes be utilitarian, but they can also be welcoming and beautiful. The guest bathroom at Chelsea Scott’s home was anything but. “The ‘before’ of the bathroom was simply just plain,” Chelsea says. “The sink vanity was a dark brown, and the walls were painted with flat, darker beige paint that did not stand up to normal traffic in a bathroom.

A few things to love from the ’70s, design-wise? Macrame, rattan, funky patterns — even conversation pits. A few things that certainly aren’t missed from the decade? Orange-toned everything, fluorescent lighting, and bland laminate countertops.Unfortunately, Jenessa Weaver’s 1977 kitchen had several not-so-fun-or-funky ’70s details, and she was looking for a change. So she enlisted the help of her childhood best friend, Alysha, designer and owner of Camp Interiors.

A color-drenched paint effect (aka painting the walls, trim, and ceiling all the same color) is not always possible for a renter if there are lease stipulations about painting the ceiling, but Rosaline Elbay got pretty close in her Boerum Hill apartment’s bedroom. “If this weren’t a rental, I probably would have color drenched completely, but I settled for just drenching the closet doors,” Rosaline says.

If you work from home, you might want to create a workspace that inspires and motivates you — even if that means getting a little unconventional. For Sean Matthew Robinson, it made the most sense to turn what used to be the apartment’s living room into his bedroom… and a corner office.

Talk about small-but-mighty.

There are some rooms that just feel extra dreamy — home libraries with wall-to-wall bookshelves and antique lamps, sunrooms with tall windows and lots of plants, or powder rooms that feel straight out of a hotel, perhaps.These are the kinds of rooms you pin to inspiration boards or add to a “someday” list. For interior designer Valerie Darden (@brextoncoleinteriors), it’s breakfast nooks that make a house feel extra fancy.

When my partner Ben’s sister Annie, her husband Joe, and their son Ollie recently moved back to the Midwest, we were all thrilled — not just because we’d get to see them more often, but also because they bought a house that was basically a blank canvas. The bones are great, but every room is waiting for some love. Naturally, I volunteered to kick things off with a dining room makeover (check out the YouTube video version here) to set the tone for the rest of their home.

“The space seemed to have received no love for decades,” Taylor Graves says of what would become her daughter’s nursery. Before Taylor and her husband moved in, it had been a college student’s guest room and was simply used for function — “and it looked like it,” Taylor notes. Multiple layers of paint covered multiple layers of wallpaper, but the room was filled with details that just needed proper attention.