9 of the World’s Most Beautiful and Unique Pools
I recently moved from Houston to New York, so my access to actual swimming pools is a lot more restricted than it used to be. I have dealt with this by spending a disproportionally large amount of time looking at pools on the internet.
Nancy Mitchell
Jul 26, 2016
A Tiny House Chock Full of Books
I know you guys love books. In past posts about tiny houses, I’ve definitely heard some of you say that you could never imagine living in such a small space, because you could never, ever give up your books. Fortunately, you don’t have to. April Anson lived in a tiny house for three years while a student at the University of Oregon, and while living in 114 square feet definitely involved some sacrifices, parting with her books wasn’t one of them.
Nancy Mitchell
Jul 26, 2016
Before & After: A Sleek Modern Update for a 1960s Kitchen
Laura had been living in her two-bedroom co-op in Brooklyn’s Windsor Terrace for five years before she finally decided to take the plunge and renovate her kitchen. While her cabinets were still in decent shape, the linoleum floor was not: it “only looked serviceable in the five minutes after it was mopped.” And the original 1960s oven, while charming, was clearly due for an upgrade.
Nancy Mitchell
Jul 25, 2016
What Does a Million Dollar Apartment in NYC Look Like?
To many of us, a million dollar home sounds like it should be the lap of luxury: marble tubs, game room, wine cellar, perhaps a private pool. But, a million dollars doesn’t go quite as far down amenities lane in New York City. So what does a million bucks buy you in Gotham? Here are ten apartments around the million dollar mark and currently on the market. This loft one-bedroom in Chelsea boasts a very large living room with a gorgeous wall of windows.
Nancy Mitchell
Jul 22, 2016
Before & After: A Spacious Living Room Gets an Entirely New Look
At Apartment Therapy, we talk a lot about dealing with small spaces, but larger spaces can also present their own unique design challenge. When one Brooklyn family moved into their dream home, the oversized living room proved to be a bit of a conundrum — so they turned to a designer for guidance. Before, the family’s furniture — a single sofa and a small dining table — was a bit lost in the expansive space.
Nancy Mitchell
Jul 19, 2016
European Style Meets Bohemian Chic in a London Apartment
While I love minimal, white-walled interiors with occasional bursts of color just as much as the next person, every once in a while it’s nice to spot something different — like this Little Venice apartment by Sera of London. It’s a little bit Bohemian, a little bit Miss Havisham, a little bit crumbly European chic, wholly different, and wholly refreshing.
Nancy Mitchell
Jul 14, 2016
Yes, Concrete in the Kitchen Can Be Gorgeous (and Pink!)
Concrete might seem like an unusual choice for your kitchen, but given the right setting, its rustic, textured look can set just the right tone. Or it can be pink. Alex McCabe, co-founder of beloved Aussie brand Kip&Co, has a kitchen in her Melbourne home that’s as fun as her company’s bedding. Not only does it have glamorous brass cabinets and a standout quartzite backsplash, the island is pink concrete!
Nancy Mitchell
Jul 12, 2016
This Tiny Swedish Studio is Everything You Could Want in an Apartment
Even though I now have the tiny, perfect apartment of my dreams, I haven’t stopped being fascinated with other people’s tiny, perfect apartments. And I’m particularly drawn to this apartment in Stockholm, which despite measuring only 193 square feet manages to be everything you want an apartment to be: airy, stylish, cozy, comfortable.
Nancy Mitchell
Jul 7, 2016
Before & After: A Dark Brooklyn Kitchen Gets a Lighter Touch
After living with the dark, dated kitchen in his Ditmas Park apartment for a while (and spending countless hours watching HGTV), Blane decided it was time for a change. On his wish list: lighter cabinets, to brighten up the space, and an island with a worktop, to turn the kitchen’s less-than-ideal L shape into something more user-friendly.
Nancy Mitchell
Jul 7, 2016
5 Contemporary Designs that Completely Redefine the Chair
One of my favorite things about home design is the wonderful variety of ways in which clever designers have re-invented the chair. When you picture a chair you probably think of one of the traditional forms of the chair, with a back and a seat and legs.
Nancy Mitchell
Jun 29, 2016
A Tiny Stockholm Apartment Makes the Most of 400 Square Feet
400 square feet may not seem like a lot — but that’s reckoning without the ingenuity of Swedish design. Thanks to a simple but very smart floor plan, this diminutive Swedish apartment makes living small look positively luxurious. It’s located in Stockholm, and was once available for sale (but sadly is no longer) from brokerage firm Husman Hagberg.
Nancy Mitchell
Jun 23, 2016
Space Savers: IKEA Hacks for Small Closets
Teeny tiny closet got you down? After you’ve winnowed your clothes down to the essentials with our Closet Cure (of course), check out these nine clever ways to use IKEA products to squeeze out a little extra storage in your closet. Above: A Grundtal rail and hooks squeeze out storage for a few extra pairs of shoes behind the door in this closet from Maria EMB. The Bygel rail can do the same for heels, as seen on Stylizmo.
Nancy Mitchell
Jun 15, 2016
2 People, 3 Cats, 309 Square Feet: A Magical Transforming Hong Kong Apartment
In Hong Kong, one of the most densely packed cities in the world, a young couple presented their architects with a seemingly impossible challenge: designing an apartment that would include a large kitchen, a home theater, a bathroom with a tub, and sleeping spaces for the couple and their overnight guests. The space also had to acommodate the couple’s three cats — and all this in 309 square feet.
Nancy Mitchell
Jun 13, 2016
Protect Your Modesty at the Beach this Summer with a Bathing Machine
To modern eyes, the bathing suits of the past may seem excessively, even hilariously, modest. But more than 100 years ago, these getups were scandalous. So scandalous, in fact, that clever folks in the 18th century figured out a way for female bathers to get into the water without ever being seen in their bathing suit at all. It all involved an ingenious little device called the bathing machine.
Nancy Mitchell
Jun 1, 2016
Before & After: A New York Apartment Dream Come True
This Before & After is all about the pursuit of a beautiful dream. When they bought their co-op in Manhattan, Laura and Peter had a dream, the same dream that animates the hopes of millions of New Yorkers: an in-unit washer and dryer. In pursuit of their dream, they intentionally bought in a building that allowed retrofits of washer and dryer connections.
Nancy Mitchell
May 26, 2016
The World’s Weirdest, Wildest, and Most Wonderful Sofas
Most sofas are well-behaved. They have a back and a seat and legs and maybe arms, and they look, well, like a sofa. These are not those sofas. These sofas (if you can even call a giant cat a sofa) dare to reimagine the very idea of the sofa, pushing ordinary furniture to weird and wild and even wonderful extremes. Above: It’s always nice to have a cat sit on your lap, but what if the tables were turned and you could curl up in your cat’s lap?
Nancy Mitchell
May 20, 2016
Broken is Beautiful: The Japanese Tradition That Makes Broken Things Even Better than Brand New
Warning/workspace/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/atmedia-cloudinary-image-block/atmedia-cloudinary-image-block.php82 It is a fact of life that buildings, as they age, inevitably fall apart. We Americans are not quite comfortable with this. We like everything to be shiny and new: we like all our buildings and our interior finishes to have the smooth sameness of youth. But the Japanese have developed a way of dealing with this.
Nancy Mitchell
May 19, 2016
8 Easy DIY Ways To Power Up Your Home’s Curb Appeal
Curb appeal is about your home’s first impression—the face it presents to the world (and to you, when you come home every day). And while you may think of your home’s exterior as something that’s difficult to change without investing a lot of money and time, there are actually quite a few (really simple, DIY) things you can do to enhance your home’s curb appeal—many of them without even picking up a hammer.
Nancy Mitchell
May 19, 2016
Wall-Mounted Shelving Systems You Can DIY
One of my favorite small space hacks is swapping your bookcases for wall-mounted shelving. We’ve created roundups of wall mounted shelving systems before, but for those of you who are especially crafty there are also plenty of DIY options. Here are eight different DIY ways to turn a blank wall into a storage mecca. Above: Dabito from Old Brand New used components available at the hardware store to create this wall-mounted shelving system, which includes a desk.
Nancy Mitchell
May 13, 2016
The Secret History of the Closet
You probably think of a closet as a little room where you hang up your clothes. But for much of its history, the closet has served a completely different purpose entirely. Come back with me, if you will, to the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages having a bedroom was a bit of a privilege — most common folks slept either on the floor of the great hall of the manor where they lived, or in the single room that served them as kitchen, living room, dining room, and bedroom all in one.
Nancy Mitchell
Apr 24, 2016
Little Life Savers: Clever IKEA Hacks for Small Spaces
We love good IKEA hacks and even more so when they solve small space problems.
Nancy Mitchell
Apr 13, 2016
7 Ways to Upgrade IKEA Picture Frames
Want to give those plain old IKEA frames a little extra bit of pizazz? Of course you do! Here are seven creative (and very inexpensive!) ways to dress them up using paint, tape, and a variety of creative techniques. Above: All it takes is a little spray paint to add gold corners, and a little touch of glam, to a RIBBA frame. DIY from Repolished.
Nancy Mitchell
Apr 13, 2016
A Brief History of Memphis, The Design Group that Defined the Look of the ’80s
Whether you think of this as good news or terrible news, in the world of design, the ’80s are back in a big way. So we thought this would be a good time to do a brief dip into the history of the Memphis Design Group, an Italian design and architecture collective whose wild, colorful, postmodern style defined the look of the 80s.
Nancy Mitchell
Apr 6, 2016
Shopper’s Guide: Where to Buy Really, Really Big Vases
Recently I wrote about a big, beautiful new trend for the home: blooms and branches displayed in big, oversized vases. Many of you loved the look, but wanted to know: where does one find a vase this big? So I’ve rounded up a few options. A few things I was looking for: vases made of clear glass (minimal, works with any decor, shows off flowers well), and that measured 12 inches or more in at least one dimension.
Nancy Mitchell
Apr 5, 2016
Before & After: New Life for a Crumbling Clinton Hill Bathroom
While not lacking in a certain crumbly charm, the bathroom in Colin and Orli’s Crown Heights co-op was definitely not a place where you would want to take a bath. Five different layers of floor tiles, installed on top of each other over the years, made for an unsettling drop when stepping into the tub. The subway tile walls were starting to look far too much like an actual subway for comfort, and thanks to many decades of water damage, the whole thing was falling apart.
Nancy Mitchell
Apr 5, 2016
Before & After: Two Tiny Closets Get a Super-Functional Update
The master bedroom of Nikkia and Daniel’s two-bedroom apartment had an especially perplexing and inefficient closet situation: two tiny closets side by side, each with a single shelf and hanging rail, and a tiny door that made accessing the closet’s contents a challenge. So as part of their apartment renovation (which included a very smart kitchen update), they combined the two tiny, poorly designed closets into one big, super-efficient one.
Nancy Mitchell
Apr 1, 2016
An 85-Year-Old ‘Tiny House’ in the Style of Frank Lloyd Wright
We often talk about tiny houses and small space living as if they’re a new thing, but the truth is that little houses have been around for years (and were, in fact, once the norm for a majority of Americans). Case in point: this 85-year-old home, built by one of his disciples in the style of Frank Lloyd Wright, whose compact 552 square foot floorplan provides plenty of inspiration for the small houses of today.
Nancy Mitchell
Mar 28, 2016
Before & After: Smart Updates for a Generic Kitchen
Here’s a thing that’s bound to happen when you’re house shopping: you see a place where the previous owner has replaced the kitchen (or bathroom), ostensibly as a selling point, but the new kitchen or bathroom already looks incredibly dated. It’s especially frustrating if you really like the place otherwise, because then you find yourself in the position of either living with a kitchen that you really don’t like, or ripping out one that’s brand-new.
Nancy Mitchell
Mar 21, 2016
Before & After: A Closetless Apartment Dilemma, Solved
When you find the perfect apartment, but it doesn’t have a closet, you have two choices: You can either A. throw away all your clothes, or B. get creative. I chose B. Finding an apartment in New York is not easy. In fact, it is damn near impossible.
Nancy Mitchell
Mar 15, 2016
Ideas for Making a Dark (or Totally Windowless) Room Less Depressing
Good light can make or break a space, and unfortunately natural lighting is probably the one thing about a room that’s hardest to change. So when you’re faced with a space that has very few windows (or none at all), how do you cope? We’ve got some ideas. Multiply the light you do have. If you have a window, use translucent shades or sheer curtains for privacy, instead of blocking it with heavy window treatments.
Nancy Mitchell
Mar 14, 2016
Modern House Numbers for Every Budget
Think about it: when you go to a new friend’s house for the first time, what’s the first thing you look at? The numbers, of course. House numbers may seem like a small thing, but they’re so crucial to first impressions. These days there are a myriad of interesting, modern numbers that will identify your house to the world — and show off your style, too. Above: Neutra house numbers, $27 each from DWR. Modern Avalon collection brushed nickel house numbers, $15.
Nancy Mitchell
Mar 9, 2016
A Small and Stunning Paris Apartment
We’ve featured quite a few places by A+B Kasha before: this Paris-based real estate and design firm excels at creating meticulously detailed apartments where just the walls and floors themselves are a work of art. My current favorite project of theirs is a little jewel of a one-bedroom, 270 square feet of perfection tucked away on the top floor of a 19th-century building in Paris’ 6th arrondissement.
Nancy Mitchell
Mar 4, 2016
Here’s Why We Think of Pink as a Color for Girls
We have strong associations with the color pink: most people think of it as a ‘girly’ color. But have you ever stopped to think about why that is? It might surprise you to learn that this strange association of color with gender can be traced to just one person: 1950s First Lady Mamie Eisenhower. The post – World War II era, in America, was a period of unprecedented prosperity.
Nancy Mitchell
Feb 29, 2016
Dare to Bare: 7 Rooms with Empty Walls (and Why They Work)
Warning/workspace/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/atmedia-cloudinary-image-block/atmedia-cloudinary-image-block.php82 We’ve always said that art is one of the most important elements in a room, one of the things that helps it feel complete. But this, like a lot of other decorating mantras, is more of a suggestion than a commandment, and as with a lot of other rules there are plenty of exceptions.
Nancy Mitchell
Feb 23, 2016
Save Money, Save Space: 8 Things to Borrow Instead of Buy
When you’re trying something new, often your first instinct is to rush out and buy all the things you need for whatever activity you’ve taken on, be it camping or traveling or hosting overnight guests. But often these things, bought with the best of intentions, end up getting used only very infrequently — and taking up a lot space in your home in the meantime.
Nancy Mitchell
Feb 19, 2016
11 Beautiful Wall Murals That Will Make You Want to Break Up with Paint
Why settle for an oversized piece of art when you could have a piece of art that covers the whole wall? These 11 murals will have a big, big impact—hang one on the wall and your decorating job is pretty much done. A quick note to start: a wall mural differentiates from wallpaper in that it does not repeat. It’s an entire scene stretch across a determined width, while wallpaper matches up and repeats indefinitely.
Nancy Mitchell
Feb 17, 2016
How To Love the Home You Have Just a Little Bit More
Valentine’s Day has come and gone for another year, leaving everyone thinking about love and relationships. But what about the relationship you have with your home? Here are five (free!) things you can do to love your home just a little bit more. Get rid of some stuff. Lots of advice about how to make your home better revolves around bringing in something new.
Nancy Mitchell
Feb 17, 2016
The Rise and Fall of the Heart-Shaped Hot Tub
It’s Valentine’s Day, which means that the two-lobed shape that we somehow recognize as representing a human heart is suddenly everywhere. There are heart-shaped candies, cards, chocolates, even heart-shaped pizzas. And many years ago, one man had the idea of building a heart-shaped hot tub… and a movement was born.
Nancy Mitchell
Feb 14, 2016
5 Real-Life Wardrobe Storage Solutions From Apartments with No Closets
Take inspiration from these five real-life apartments, whose residents found smart ways to store everything with no closet in sight.
Nancy Mitchell
Feb 5, 2016
The Best Kitchen Carts & Islands for Every Budget
You don’t have to remodel to add a lot of extra counter space and storage space to your kitchen — all it takes is a kitchen cart. These little workhorses are a great way to make a small kitchen more workable, or just help you get the most of your space no matter what size it is. We’ve rounded up a few of our favorite kitchen carts (and islands), in a range of prices to suit pretty much any budget. This hardworking IKEA cart is perfect for smaller kitchens.
Nancy Mitchell
Feb 2, 2016
Don’t Use Your Dining Room? Our Favorite Alternative Idea
Let’s face it: as much as we’d all like to think of ourselves as the sort of people who throw dinner parties all the time, the formal dining room is mostly obsolete. So what’s a modern family to do? You can set up a dining table and chairs in there and then let stuff collect on the table (I’m pretty sure this is the default), or you can take it one step further and transform your dining room into a multi-purpose space that you’ll use every day.
Nancy Mitchell
Feb 1, 2016
How a Handheld Vacuum Changed the Way I Think About Cleaning
It took me a long time to get here but I finally moved into the tiny apartment of my dreams, and I’ve been enjoying outfitting it with all the perfect things. But my favorite thing that I’ve bought for my home is not my beautiful new velvet sofa or my gorgeous antique Moroccan rug. It is a vacuum cleaner. It might be reaching a bit to say that a handheld vacuum cleaner has changed my life, but it has definitely changed the way I clean — and I’m not going back.
Nancy Mitchell
Jan 1, 2016
8 Cozy Living Rooms and How You Can Get the Look
Humans don’t hibernate, but we do an approximation of it. If you live in the northern climes, chances are there are a few months where you just barely leave the house. During these months your home becomes more important than ever before: you want it to be a place that’s cozy, that’s welcoming, a place where you would feel good being trapped in a blizzard.
Nancy Mitchell
Dec 11, 2015
Holiday Hosting: Guest Room Must-Haves
If you’re lucky enough to have a guest room, chances are good that you’ll be hosting someone there this holiday season. Of course you want your guests to be comfortable, but even the most dedicated hosts sometimes forget a few things. Before your guests arrive, take a look at this checklist of six guest room must-haves to make their stay as enjoyable as possible. Blankets. Probably the biggest potential source of discomfort for your guests is your home’s temperature.
Nancy Mitchell
Nov 30, 2015
One Shelf, 5 Ways: The Endlessly Versatile LACK Wall Shelf Unit
The LACK wall shelf is a much more versatile piece than you might think. By twisting and turning and stacking it, you can put this $49 shelf to work in your home in myriad ways.
Nancy Mitchell
Nov 19, 2015
5 Kitchens That Are Like Nothing You’ve Ever Seen Before
When you look at a lot of kitchens, you see a lot of white cabinets and white marble countertops and subway tile. And of course those things are lovely, but every once in a while it’s nice to see something totally different, a kitchen with colors or details or elements that completely set it apart from the rest. Here are five kitchens that are completely off the beaten path — in the best possible way.
Nancy Mitchell
Nov 3, 2015
The Mysterious History of the Fourth Meal – and Why it Might Be Coming Back
Most of us eat three meals a day: breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But this isn’t true all over the world, and it hasn’t always been the case even in America. Several historical references make mention of a mysterious fourth meal — a second or ‘reve’ supper. Although we may think of our standard of three meals as the norm, it’s not just hobbits who eat more than three meals a day.
Nancy Mitchell
Oct 23, 2015
Why Do People in the South Call Lunch ‘Dinner’ and Dinner ‘Supper’?
I grew up in the South, and that means I had a grandma who was an excellent cook, but it also means that, throughout my childhood, I was exceedingly confused about what the word ‘dinner’ meant. Most people I knew used dinner to refer to the evening meal and lunch for the mid-day one, but at grandma’s dinner happened at noon and there was another meal, supper, in the evening. Were my relatives trying to confuse me? What, exactly, did it all mean?
Nancy Mitchell
Oct 20, 2015