Design

White kitchen with blue walls, patterned backsplash, farmhouse sink, and stainless steel stove.

The Cement Tile Trend is Holding Strong (& We Couldn’t Be Happier)

Some trends stand the test of time for a reason. Case in point: cement tiles. Although they’ve been making waves in the decor scene for a looong while now (historians date some versions back to the 12th Century), these beautiful tiles started to pop up inside the most design-savvy contemporary homes across the globe in recent years in a big way. And it’s not difficult to see why. Along with creating artfully polished displays, cement tiles are crafted from natural materials (i.e.

Caroline Biggs

Jul 12, 2017

The Modern Architectural Pioneer & Furniture Designer We Don’t Hear About Enough

Eileen Gray created one of the most iconic side tables ever (as well as the most expensive chair from the 20th century every sold).

Nancy Mitchell

Apr 16, 2017

This UFO-Shaped Rocking Chair Is Out of This World

The last thing we tend to think of when we see furniture is an extraterrestrial entity, but this UFO-shaped rocking chair has us seriously reconsidering the way we view seating options. Despite the obvious stigma attached to it, allow us to assure you that this rocking chair doesn’t immediately conjure up images of sleeping babies and knitting grandmas.

Kenya Foy

Apr 14, 2017

How To Make a Studio Apartment Feel Bigger Than It Is

One of the biggest downsides to studio living is feeling like you live — and entertain — in your bedroom. But even though that might physically/technically be true, it doesn’t mean you can’t use design to make it feel like it’s more than just a studio. These smart and stylish studios — all under 500 square feet — employ three of the most successful ways to make a studio apartment feel bigger than it is.

Adrienne Breaux

Mar 6, 2017

Keep It Simple (& Save Money) by Avoiding These Mistakes When Decorating a Rental

Interior designer Alissa of Lenore Design has had the task of turning her family’s rental into a warm home that matches their personality. With an industrial feel (think: overhead pipes meeting very little overhead lighting), the space wasn’t an easy project to tackle. Thankfully, Alissa’s design skills were just what this space needed, to transform it from a standard rental to a warm and welcoming home.

Adrienne Breaux

Feb 23, 2017

The Rules for Decorating an Older Home (Hint: Any Damn Way You Please)

My current apartment is housed in a building over 100 years old. And though it creaks and cracks a lot, nothing can replace the charm of tall ceilings, cove molding and other traditional building features. Yet I sometimes wonder if my furnishings do the space justice? Does my “Bohemian-meets-Maximalist-meets-Literally-Throw-Anything-Together” style really make the architectural details of this older building sing?

Adrienne Breaux

Feb 15, 2017

Sneak Peek: Favorites from the New IKEA Stockholm 2017 Collection

Tomorrow, IKEA is launching the official press site for the new STOCKHOLM 2017 collection. But today, I received an advance paper copy of the catalog in the mail and just had to share some favorites ASAP: there are some really strong designs (some classic, some more funky) at very good prices. The pieces in the collection will be available in the US starting in April and I can tell you, I’ve definitely got my eye on that rattan cabinet. I see a trip to Schaumburg in my future.

Janel Laban

Feb 14, 2017

Everything You Need to Know About Biedermeier Style

More than a century before the Eameses created their simple, honest furniture designed to appeal to the everyman, a style of furnishings emerged in Germany, one whose simplicity, visual lightness, and playful geometries were a herald of things to come. Biedermeier is notable for being the first decorative movement that was created by and for the middle class, and even today, after two centuries, these pieces still feel surprisingly fresh and modern.

Nancy Mitchell

Feb 1, 2017

Inside the Designer’s Mind: Hand Drawn Insights from a Graphic Artist

Getting a peek into the creative surroundings of one of your favorite artists is a special treat. Here, we were lucky enough to get a glimpse into the world of Renee Griffith of the naturally thoughtful paper goods brand Heartswell.

Cara Gibbs

Jan 15, 2017

If You’ve Ever Dreamed of Owning a Dreamy Boutique Hotel, Read This

Tucked away in the gated Ocean Park community in San Juan, The Dreamcatcher guesthouse features nine unique rooms and three suites, each one featuring its own distinct style. And though The Dreamcatcher became a beautiful space organically, co-owners Sylvia and Stephan put in countless hours and hard work, as most major renovation projects require.

Esteban Cortez

Jan 13, 2017

What It’s Like Having a Mom Who’s an Interior Decorator

Colie and her husband immensely enjoy their 781 square foot Minneapolis apartment, thanks in no small part to the well-designed, cohesive and comfortable space Colie has crafted. The decorating skill just might be genetic because Colie’s mother, Nancy Sieve, is an interior decorator. After we published the tour, I asked Colie a few questions about what it was like growing up with a mom with a knack for design.

Adrienne Breaux

Jan 12, 2017

What’s Your Type? Fonts and their Furniture Doppelgangers

It started, as things so often do, with a Comic Sans joke. From there, our team Slack chat was abuzz with fonts and furniture (and decor) comparisons. Below are a few highly scientific, internationally renowned design (graphic): design (furniture) analogies from the creative minds of Apartment Therapy Editorial. Poor, poor Comic Sans. It just can’t catch a break! It has become the internet’s favorite whipping boy, shorthand for outdated taste and mom vibes.

Nora Taylor

Dec 29, 2016

15 Free Things for Art and Design Lovers to Do in NYC

If you live in New York, you don’t need another reminder of how outrageously expensive this city is. But while rent, down payments on a house and living costs are undeniably high, Manhattan and its boroughs attempt to make it up to us by being rich in plenty of 100% free-to-enjoy art, culture and design. From art museums, to craft fairs, to gallery openings, this is how starving artists (and designers!) save in the city.

Katie Holdefehr

Nov 30, 2016

17 Ridiculous Design-Related Pick Up Lines to Use at Holiday Parties

It’s holiday party season, which means ample opportunities for awkward exchanges with your office crush, your neighbor crush, or your longtime friend crush (huzzah?). Ok, more like blergh. So just for fun, since we’re all design fans, let’s imagine a world where, instead of stilted small talk about craft beers or Netflix shows, we exchanged design-related pick up lines…a world like this: *Okay, no one said these were any good, but please do report back if you try one!

Julia Brenner

Nov 17, 2016

Color Palettes to Make “Shadow” (Benjamin Moore’s Color of the Year) Work in Your Home

In case you missed it, Benjamin Moore announced its Color of the Year for 2017. Shadow 2117-30, a deep purple that can lean more toward a smokey charcoal or a lighter violet depending on the light, came out on top for the paint brand. In honor of the celebrated hue, we’ve put together four different palettes that work with a deep, rich purple so that, no matter your taste, you’ll be tempted to incorporate the in-style shade somewhere in your home.

Allie M. Harper

Nov 15, 2016

The Trick to Surviving a Colorful Vintage Tiled Bathroom

Whether you rent and can’t make any changes or just don’t have the funds to remodel, moving into a home with a vintage bathroom can be a challenge. When that bathroom sports vintage tiles in intense colors, it can be especially puzzling to figure out how to decorate. If the tiles have to stay — and the color palette’s been forced on you, for better or worse — try a trick to making vintage bathrooms work.

Adrienne Breaux

Oct 25, 2016

Decade-by-Decade: A Look at the Typical American Household by Decade

Popular design trends are hard to pinpoint when you’re in the midst of them, but painfully easy to spot once you’re a decade or two removed (the groovy pad of Megan Draper on AMC’s Mad Men screams of the swinging ’70s). Post WWII, decor trends seem to have had about a 10-year lifespan, and we’ve chronicled the nostalgic bullet points for each period.

Jessica Isaac

Oct 23, 2016

What It’s Like to Live in a Eichler “California Modern” Dream House

We toured Hope and Pete’s home a few years ago, and it instantly became a favorite house tour of mine. The couple’s style is breezy, bohemian and effortless — the kind of adjectives I aim for in my own home’s decor. But I also loved their house tour because they live in a mid-century (dream-to-me) home built in 1956 by famed real estate developer Joseph Eichler.

Adrienne Breaux

Oct 17, 2016

Turn Your Rental Bathroom into a Spa—No Remodeling Required

When describing your rental bathroom, “spa-like” and “personal sanctuary” are likely not the first words that come to mind. The bathroom of your dreams may be a full remodel away, but by taking cues from spas and saunas, you can decorate your way to a more relaxing space. Grab a Turkish towel and some eucalyptus—it’s time to teach your bathroom how to chill out.

Katie Holdefehr

Oct 14, 2016

#7: SUNNERSTA Cart & Mini Kitchen

What do you think? Can the SUNNERSTA cart usurp the seemingly unstoppable and ever-popular RASKOG ? Will it capture the hearts of organizing decorators everywhere? It’s pretty darn cute and seems to tick many of the same boxes, including the price point. Designed by Henrik Preutz. IKEA says: Sometimes installing a large kitchen isn’t necessary, or too expensive and time-consuming. That’s why SUNNERSTA mini-kitchen was developed.

Janel Laban

Jul 25, 2016

Broken is Beautiful: The Japanese Tradition That Makes Broken Things Even Better than Brand New

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. They have, in fact, embraced the idea that sometimes fixing broken things can make them even better and more beautiful than when they were new.

Nancy Mitchell

May 19, 2016

Try this Easy (and Free!) Fix When Your Furniture Feels Too Small for the Room

Upgrading to a bigger space? Good on you! You’ll love waking up every morning without the guarantee of smashing your shins on the foot of the bed as you walk around it. But you might find your old stuff looks a little, well, small in that new, more spacious apartment.

Taryn Williford

Apr 29, 2016

Relaxed Design Inspiration from Awesome Australian Homes

Is it just me, or has there been extra awesomeness in our recent house tours coming from Australia? Their success is no doubt due in part to our talented photographers capturing these spaces, but these homes seem to have an effortless, breezy sense of fun in them which makes them memorable. Lots of colors, fun patterns, interesting shapes and more aren’t restricted to just kids rooms.

Adrienne Breaux

Apr 28, 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

6 Ways to Fill a Wall that Are as Useful as They Are Beautiful

Imagine for a moment that you’re an infallibly practical person. The idea of filling a wall with framed artwork…well, it would be such a waste, wouldn’t it? Sure, there’s value in surrounding yourself and decorating your walls with pretty things. But useful things can be beautiful, too. A cork wall treatment acts as a big mood board, perfect for a study, home office or any room that welcomes constant visual change.

Taryn Williford

Mar 24, 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

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

10 Things To Know About Your Eames Chair

So you bought an Eames chair because it was cool. It’s okay—so did I. But now when people come over and say, “I like your chair, where did you get that?” it’d be nice to tell them a little more than, “It’s from a designer.” Here are 10 fun facts about your chair that you can throw around at the next cocktail party, because, you know, knowing stuff is also pretty darn cool, too. 1.

Alison Gerber

Feb 3, 2016

Before & After: A Playroom Grows Up

Our living room downstairs was transformed over to a playroom when my babies were little, and the room was a disaster. It was time to make that step and donate a big percentage of my kids’ toys and create a more grownup space in here. I was able to sell the furniture from the room, and that helped me with my budget for the makeover. I wanted to create a comfortable living room with lots of textures, layers and personality.

Nora Taylor

Dec 8, 2015

Caryn’s House of Boys (With Plenty of Pink)

Name: Caryn Location: Santa Cruz, California In 2005, my husband and I bought a very small 1000 square foot house in Santa Cruz, California to raise our growing family. Proximity to the ocean and a great elementary school trumped our desire for square footage! Our little Santa Cruz bungalow had no unique architecture, so I viewed it as a blank canvas.

Nora Taylor

Dec 6, 2015

Meg’s Memphis-Inspired ’80s Apartment

Name: Meg Location: Logan Square — Chicago, Illinois Last year my boyfriend and I scored a Memphis Design Group exhibit poster at a garage sale down the street for $7. I’d been wanting to do an ’80s apartment for ages, but never pulled the trigger (I was getting my design fix through my blog). Neal was on board and began to make a copy of our favorite Memphis pendant lamp, “The Santa Fe” by Matteo Thun, out of balsa wood and an IKEA lamp cord. Thanks, Meg!

Nora Taylor

Dec 2, 2015

Style Recipe: Mix IKEA & Vintage for the Perfect Dining Room

There’s no one-size fits all recipe for a room, of course. But if you’re stuck trying to get that luxe-y, lived-in look in your dining room on an affordable budget, can we suggest one of our favorite combinations? The dining room is the perfect place to play with furniture because there are no time constraints on getting it “finished.” Start with what you have (a table and 4-ish chairs, maybe?

Taryn Williford

Oct 22, 2015

5 Things People (Almost Always) Forget When Designing Their Living Room

There’s the picking out of the sofa. Choosing chairs. Deciding on a credenza. Arguing over where the television should go. There’s waffling over rug color and size. And there’s considering whether you should paint or wallpaper. But there are also a handful of things to think about that most people tend to forget when first setting up their living room. How does one come up with the optimum number of seats for a living room?

Adrienne Breaux

Aug 27, 2015

The Pro Designer Trick That Makes Homes Feel Cozy & Cohesive

When you’re feeling like the rooms of your home are design islands — lovely spaces by themselves but not necessarily connected to the architecture of your home or the entire home itself — you might want to try out this trick in the designer’s toolbox. This idea of echoing elements is NOT putting two of the same pieces of something in two different rooms. It’s not having carbon copies of the same art adorning walls in all your rooms.

Adrienne Breaux

Jul 24, 2015

Why ‘Busy’ Isn’t Always Bad: Living Room Lessons

We talk a lot about streamlining. Minimizing. Cutting back. Paring down. And we really think that’s good. But it’s not always best (for you or your style). Sometimes “busy” decor, rooms bursting with things you love and that inspire you, is the right choice for your home. Take a page from these “busy” living rooms to learn lessons on how to make a full, exciting living room work for your style, without overwhelming everyone who spends time in it.

Adrienne Breaux

Jun 15, 2015

Why Modern Cities Are So Ugly…and What We Can Do to Fix Them

We tend to think of beauty as being mostly subjective. But if you were to ask a random sampling of 100 people what the most beautiful cities in the world are, you’d probably get a lot of very similar answers. A lot of people might name San Francisco, or Paris, or Prague. But you probably wouldn’t garner a lot of votes for Frankfurt, Germany, or Houston, Texas. What makes certain cities more beautiful than others? And why is it that newer cities often tend to be the ugliest of all?

Nancy Mitchell

Apr 22, 2015

The 4 Qualities of All Successful Cities

I studied architecture in college but somehow managed to avoid reading that seminal work of city planning, Jane Jacobs’ Death and Life of Great American Cities. Until I moved to NYC, and a friend challenged me to read it for an impromptu book club, and I started taking Jane with me on the subway and suddenly the secrets of this great city, and of all great cities, were laid bare before my eyes.

Nancy Mitchell

Apr 13, 2015

UK Style: 5 Particularly British Design Lessons I’ve Learned

I’ve been living in London for nearly a decade now, having moved here from Canada as a bright-eyed university graduate, in search of tea and adventure. Through my friendships and work as an interior designer (not to mention my work for Apartment Therapy— I love a good House Tour snoop), I’ve been lucky enough to have been invited into countless English homes over the years, from Cornwall to Yorkshire and nearly every county in between.

Eleanor Büsing

Feb 19, 2015

‘Jolie Laide’ and the Very French Art of Appreciating Imperfection

It’s funny how sometimes a phrase can change its meaning as you change your mindset. That is, its definition and significance remain the same and suddenly you realize that you’re the one who has come to better understand it. Such was the case recently when I was reminded of a French term I learned and thought I understood long ago: jolie laide.

Jennifer Hunter

Nov 10, 2014

Garden Design Classics: The Armillary Sphere

Armillary spheres (sometimes referred to as armillary sundials) are a common decorative ornament in many gardens but can most often be spotted in the traditional English garden. Today’s armillary spheres, used as simply a decorative feature instead of a scientific instrument. are primarily fabricated of metal, and have become much more streamlined compared to their ancient counterparts. So what exactly is an armillary sphere, you might wonder?

Kimber Watson

Jun 13, 2014

Faye’s Tiny New York Bohemian Studio

Name: Faye Location: New York City, New York My home is decorated very bohemian like. It’s very cozy and tiny! It’s a studio in Manhattan — 200 square feet. Most of my furniture is from Urban Outfitters, the garbage, or hand-me-downs. My favorite item is my rocking chair. I love to read books while sitting on it and I placed it by the window to get natural light while reading. Thanks, Faye! • Interested in sharing your home with Apartment Therapy?

Adrienne Breaux

May 3, 2014

First Look: 12 Favorites from IKEA’s New PS 2014 Collection

The editors in NYC got the chance to go see the new IKEA PS 2014 Collection this morning, and it’s an amazing one. Created by 14 young designers from around the globe, its focus is on solutions for small space living – in IKEA’s words “to live more simply and do more with the space you have”.

Janel Laban

Mar 13, 2014

A Creative Collective In Atwater Village

Names: Bri Emery of Design Love Fest, Brian Morrow + Jonathan Lynch of Sharkpig, Steve Pappin of Son Of A Shark Pig, Max Wanger of Max Wanger Photo, Michael Antonia of The Flashdance & Yeah! Rentals and Emma Robertson of EmmaDimeLocation: Atwater Village — Los Angeles, CAWorkspace Type: Loft StudioYears worked in: 1 year When you gather up seven awesome creatives to share an office space, you will surely have a colorful, eclectic, fun atmosphere.

Bethany Nauert

Apr 4, 2012

At the Office With Tommy Chambers

Name:Tommy Chambers InteriorsLocation: West Hollywood, CaliforniaSize/Room: 1,250 square feet Years lived in: 10 years A couple of weeks ago, we got a peek inside the home of Tommy Chambers, where he puts his skills to personal use in his own abode. Next door to his flat is another apartment which houses his interior design business. Mirroring an identical elongated floor plan, this office is a root of inspiration.

Bethany Nauert

Jan 30, 2012

9 Stylish House Plants (And How To Not Immediately Kill Them)

May 5, 2017

How to Fix 4 Common Furniture Mistakes

Jul 12, 2017

How Do I Choose The Perfect Sofa?

May 31, 2017

Do You Know Your Home Décor Vocab?

Jul 11, 2017

IKEA Hacks: Eket Stackable Side Table

Apr 7, 2017