This Brooklyn Apartment Is a Master Class in the Maximal Minimalist Look

Project: Rozit Arditi of Arditi Design
Location: Brooklyn, New York

As a design style, minimalism often doesn’t leave much room for personality or punch. That’s precisely why designer Rozit Arditi of Arditi Design leaned into a beautiful brand of maximal minimalism in this young family’s Brooklyn apartment, adding pops of color and pattern to a soothing base of warm woods, textural wall coverings, and wool carpets.

“This was the first home the couple owned together after living in the husband’s previous Gramercy apartment for a few years,” says Arditi of her clients, Hillary and Adam. “The goal was to bring together both of their styles and belongings — from the colorful Le Creuset collection to the inherited artwork to the custom-made road bike.” 

Blending two drastically different aesthetics is never easy, but a hybrid style like maximal minimalism can offer a happy medium. While Adam embraced bold hues, Hillary was more of a neutrals person. So it was up to Arditi to find colors, patterns, and pieces that would appeal to the couple’s combined sensibility and offer flexibility for the possibility of children in the future (they now have two). That meant seeking out bright, almost unexpected pops of color — red-orange Wishbone chairs and an abstract canvas painted by the clients’ long-time friends in the dining room; pink wallpaper from Brook Perdigon Textiles and a Joybird appletini green sectional in the family room — and marrying them with grasscloth and other natural materials, hits of wood, and neutral Clare paint colors like Timeless and Dirty Martini.

Before they got to all of those fun design details, Arditi and her clients mapped out a plan for furnishing the individual spaces. “We started the project by identifying what each room’s function would be and how we would lay out the furniture for now and for future additions to the family,” says Arditi.

Everything would have a specific purpose and justification for its finish, fabric, or silhouette, and you can see how certain items, from the wooden dining table to the patterned rugs in each space, were selected for their kid-friendliness. Most things that were brought into the apartment had to be both durable and beautiful.

One of the most challenging parts of the process was designing the open plan living and the dining room. “The goal was to maximize the use of the space without compromising the stunning views,” says Arditi. “We eliminated the TV from the living room, instead placing one in the family room and one in the primary bedroom. This allowed us to have a better flow.”

The kitchen, located right off that joint living and dining space, definitely skews a little more minimalist. Arditi turned the glass open-shelving into a display area for favorite dinnerware and Le Creuset pieces, arguably making this area the true focal point of the cook space.

The primary bedroom and nursery, shown above and below, respectively, are true studies in maximal minimalism. Underfoot you’ll find vibrant rugs from the likes of Anthropolgie and Aelfie, but the furniture, bedding, wall treatments, and other textiles are, on the whole, more muted but still visually interesting.

One final element worth noting about this project is how deftly Arditi wove her clients’ existing art collection into the design scheme. While the pieces in the bedrooms were sourced and purchased from Uprise Art, most of the other works throughout the apartment were vintage, gifted, or purchased prior to living here — and you’d never know it from the way they complement the palettes of their immediate surroundings.

Thanks to Arditi, what started as a white box condo is now a deeply personal space that strikes the right balance between maximalism and minimalism — and its inhabitants’ individual design aesthetics. “I think we would all agree that we love the fact that the apartment now represents them both,” says Arditi. “It is really a home they created together to reflect their personalities and styles.”