Rooms

Showering, shaving, putting on makeup, removing makeup, brushing teeth, trimming beards—we spend a lot of our days in the bathroom. With all that time spent there, it should be a place where you feel comfortable and happy. It’s a room that should reflect your personality and aesthetic, but when two people share the same bathroom, it might be hard to keep them both happy if they have opposing styles.

When I graduated from college, I knew that I wanted to live alone. It wasn’t the wisest financial decision — I had accepted one of those resume-building editorial assistant jobs that pay a borderline living wage — but after living with roommates for four years, I had had it with other people. I wanted to come home at the end of the day to an apartment that looked exactly the same as it had when I’d left.

We’ve talked a lot about rental kitchens being “you-get-what-you-get-and-you-don’t-get-upset” zones because we’re typically limited in the changes available to us. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have kitchens with good functionality and great style; we just need to be creative! Check out this cheery kitchen from our home tours that showcases do-able and stylish ways to improve your rental scenario.

Last year while shopping with a friend for kitchen countertops, I saw and fell for a small piece of blue-and-white polished stone that reminded me of photos of Earth taken from space. Blue bahia granite, as I learned, is quarried in Brazil and is “legendary for its beauty” (although its “stunning blue colors can be a little hard to incorporate into a kitchen,” at least according to one site).

Beyond satiating curiosity, getting to see how different people tackle the layout of homes with the same floor plan is also illuminating. Do the same people have the same design challenges? Do they use space in the same way? Does architecture have a strong affect on the furniture and accessories selected? Tirsh and Minky share a lovely North Oakland loft with their dog Arnie. As the owners of Hunter & Lew, a design studio, having a home that fosters creativity is clearly important to them.

My little bathroom is one of the things I love most about my little New York apartment, but unfortunately, it does not have much in the way of storage. As someone very devoted to the idea of order, if not always the practice of it, this troubles me a great deal, and so I’ve come up with a few solutions that allow me to fit a whole bathroom’s worth of things into my small, storage-challenged space, all (mostly) out of sight.

The average person spends about a third of their life in bed, but in discussions of history we seldom ever mention sleeping (unless, perhaps, someone had the misfortune to be murdered while doing it) and even more infrequently mention the place where the sleeping happens.

Teeny tiny bedroom got you down? Fear not. We're here to help.

I’ve been on a quest for the perfect pillow for years. My mattress game is on point, but the same cannot be said about my pillows. I’ve tried memory foam, contoured memory foam, down varieties (not for me…too much fluffing), down-alternative, gel-fiber, polyester fluff—you name it, I’ve slept on it.

There’s a homelessness crisis in Los Angeles, with an estimated 50,000 people sleeping on the streets every night—a figure that’s jumped 35% in the last year alone. Architecture students at the University of Southern California have worked with city officials and nonprofits to come up with Homes for Hope, a single-occupancy pod that can be built quickly and cheaply, and can help provide safe spaces for homeless people while more permanent solutions are in the works.

If the long, dark winter days have got you down, it may be time to warm up your home’s lighting. While adjusting your lighting may not be something you think about on a daily basis, you’ll be surprised how much adding an extra table lamp or switching lightbulbs can alter the mood of a room. Don’t believe it? Take the challenge: Try one of these nine lighting tips, and we’re willing to bet you’ll find the results to be illuminating. Nothing screams “dorm!

Looking at pictures of vintage bathrooms and kitchens is one of my favorite hobbies, and lately, I’ve been noticing something very interesting: When it comes to style and over-the-top glamour, nothing beats ’20s bathrooms. Sure, the ’80s were wild, but bathrooms from 1920s are… something else. Let’s take a look at these Art Deco beauties. Above: This Art Deco style bath from 1929 is the perfect embodiment (in bathroom form) of the Roaring Twenties.