The genius of the Hotel Henriette is in the details—done on a tight budget, no less. Designer Vanessa Scoffier of Les Nouveaux Decorateurs turned the 30-year-old hotel into a “vintage, bohème, and très DIY” sanctuary. In the 140 square feet of the Double Chambre, also known as the Glamour room, vintage-doors-as-headboard and a pastel palette offer serious inspiration for […]
Kitchen of the Week: An English Country Kitchen for a Vegan Family, Vegetable Processing Plant Included
What does a vegan culinary setup look like? In the case of this project for a young family of six, it takes the guise of a craftsman-made, English country-house kitchen—with some tailor-made details for washing and storing vegetables, doing a lot of prepping and cooking, and sending meals outside. The owners—Dan runs a tech company […]
Kitchen of the Week: Playfulness and Plywood in a London Kitchen by Nimtim Architects
Before Nimi Attanayake, of London-based Nimtim Architects, redesigned the 1920s townhouse for 2020s living, the kitchen was small and closed-off from the rest of the living space: “It was perfunctory, ill-considered, with no connection to [the rest of the rooms] nor any space to socialize,” Nimi tells us. “It was also separated from the dining […]
Expert Advice: 6 Tips for Making the Spare Room Guest-Ready, with Tricia Rose
With the holidays coming on and guests arriving at the door, we’re turning our attention to the room that often gets overlooked day-to-day: the guest bed and bath. Chances are, yours has become a temporary storage facility for spare furniture, wrapping supplies, an old stationary bike, or the litter box. But it’s not too late […]
The Comfort of Things: Artist Oscar Piccolo’s Modern Bohemian Studio Apartment
“I’ve never been by myself so much, but I’m treating this period as a good pause,” London designer Oscar Piccolo tells us. “I’ve always felt connected to domestic spaces so I am finding this aspect interesting. My home is my studio, really the two go hand in hand.” A 2018 fine arts graduate of London’s […]
Tiny Kitchen of the Week: A Communal Homestead for Plant Expert Summer Rayne Oakes and Friends
Chances are good you’ve digitally crossed paths with Summer Rayne Oakes. The author of How to Make a Houseplant Love You, she’s the host of the popular Youtube series Plant One on Me and the new podcast Bad Seeds, founder of the urban naturalist hub Homestead Brooklyn, and served as the indoor gardening expert for […]
Into the Wild: Evangeline Linens in Portland, Maine
“This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight.” So goes the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem—set in what was once called Acadia, now modern-day Maine—that gives its name to Portland-based Evangeline Linens, a new soft goods company from a native Mainer and veteran of […]
Design Sleuth: A Simple Bedside Light Fix for $15
Recently admired on the Swedish blog Living by Miriam: an Ikea Hektar Lamp clamped to a wood headboard. The simple metal lamp comes with a clamp, which makes it easy to attach to a headboard. Photography by Miriam. Above: Miriam attached the Hektar lamp to her headboard using the clamp. Above: The Swedes often make their […]
The Anti-White-Box Development: A World’s Apart Brooklyn Townhouse Reinvention
There are no junk drawers here. No closets waiting to be edited either. That’s because this Greenwood Heights, Brooklyn, townhouse is one of a cluster of four 1920s structures that a group of developer friends hired Fabr Studio to redesign. It was a wise choice: Fabr is in our own Julie Carlson’s words “Brooklyn’s most […]
Disappearing Act: 15 Minimalist Hidden Kitchens
It makes so much sense: kitchens hidden behind accordion doors, sliding doors, cabinet doors—anything it takes to keep the clutter out of sight when space is tight. Here are 15 we love from the Remodelista archives: Above: In A Scottish Fisherman’s Cottage Gets an Update, With Make-Do-And-Mend Spirit, the petite kitchen is concealed behind the […]
Numeroventi in Florence: A Modern Guest House in a 16th-Century Palazzo
Martino di Napoli Rampolla opened Numeroventi, a guesthouse and residency in the center of Florence, after living among the creative class in Barcelona and noticing the “lack of a contemporary connected community in Florence” by comparison. Back in Barcelona, Rampolla met designer Andrew Trotter through his project called Openhouse (then a gallery and store, now a […]
An Iconic Modern House in Woodstock Hits the Market
Tuscon-based architect Rick Joy grew up in Maine, where he studied music and worked as a carpenter before going to architecture school at the University of Arizona. Joy has earned a reputation as a master of desert rammed-earth construction (Steven Holl calls his work “transcendent moments of space, light, and matter” in Rick Joy: Desert […]
The Artisanal Apartment: Laura Aviva Creates a Mexico City Showcase for Her Design Collection
Laura Aviva collaborates with artisan workshops in Latin America to create L’Aviva Home’s lighting, textiles, and furniture. She approaches traditional craft as a springboard for sophisticated, entirely new designs and loves getting her collaborators to apply their skills in undreamed of ways. Her pieces land in impressive settings that are featured on the company website. […]
Kitchens of the Week: 5 Retrouvius Designs Composed of Salvaged Parts
“There’s an undeniable feel-good factor in reuse: something unloved becomes valuable again,” write Maria Speake and Adam Hills. The couple met in architecture school in Glasgow, where in the late 1980s, they watched in horror as many of the city’s Victorian tenements were razed. They’ve been neck deep in salvaged building materials ever since. Together […]
A Notting Hill Townhouse Tailored for Living by Charles Mellersh
“By the time I arrived on the scene, the home had been fully renovated and reconfigured, and while it had been finished to a very high standard, it was somehow stillborn,” Charles Mellersh tells us of his latest townhouse rescue in Notting Hill. An architect/interior designer (and member of the founding editorial team at Wallpaper) who typically […]
A Rustic Townhouse Remodel by London’s Masters of Salvage
“Reuse is not a design trend; it’s an attitude, a mindset, and a behavioral approach that isn’t just relevant today— it’s vital,” says Maria Speake. Back in the early 1990s in Glasgow, she and fellow architecture student Adam Hills watched historic buildings being demolished. “The madness of this process wasn’t just about unnecessary waste, it […]
Kitchen of the Week: French Mid-Century Style in Santa Monica
We like to check in on Los Angeles-based Commune Design from time to time. The multidisciplinary design studio (it works on architecture, interior, graphic, and product design projects) always seems to have something interesting in its portfolio. On our latest visit, we were rewarded with this distinctive kitchen in Santa Monica. It belongs to Hollywood […]
Rehab Diary: Finding Storage in Unexpected Places
As architects who have a penchant for being organized (are there any who don’t?), my husband and I are on a never-ending quest for more storage space. After Living Small in London for ten years with our two sons, we Sleuthed for More Space last year and upgraded our kitchen, taking the opportunity to create […]
Washington State Four Square: The Client Got Hired by Her Designer Thanks to this Project
Hillary and Jim Straatman weren’t planning to move—nor was Hillary looking for a career change. Three years ago, she was a cardiac nurse on leave with two young daughters when a real estate broker mentioned a well-preserved four square newly on the market in Bellingham, Washington. Jim had grown up in Seattle in a similar […]
Inigo: A New Agency to Put on Your Real Estate Stalking List
By now, our fondness for The Modern House, the UK real estate agency that seems to have no shortage of enviable listings, has been well-documented (for a sampling of recent posts we’ve written that originated from their site, go here, here, and here). So we were intrigued when their team sent word of a new […]
5 Tips for a Better Night’s Sleep from a Feng Shui Master
A feng shui master who hails from North Carolina, Katherine Anne Lewis studied under three grand masters and has had her LA-based global consultancy for more than a decade, specializing in the intersection of feng shui, design, and well-being. Feng shui, Lewis explains, is the 4,000-year-old Chinese art of placement, aimed at creating rooms that impart […]
Good Neighbors: In Ohio, an Architect Turns a Cottage Next Door Into the Family Guesthouse
This last week of August, we’re revisiting summery stories from the archives, like this one: Architect Greg Dutton came to our attention a few years ago, when he designed and built a 600-square-foot Scandi-Inspired Off-the-Grid Hut on his parents’ sprawling cattle farm in eastern Ohio. Recently, we discovered he’s helped them add another 600-square-feet guesthouse […]
Hotel Esencia: Secluded Splendor on the Maya Riviera
Located on a secluded beach off Xpu-Ha Bay (half an hour from Tulum, Mexico), Hotel Esencia is a 29-room boutique hotel that’s making a name for itself as a tastemakers’ haven (the hotel recently hosted the wedding of fashion designer Jason Wu). In 2014, entrepreneur Kevin Wendle bought the 50-acre estate (once a residence and hotel belonging to an Italian duchess) and […]
Good in Bed: 8 Tips for a Better Bedroom, from Designer Pernille Lind
We first became fans of Pernille Lind back in 2017, when we covered the opening of Hotel Sanders, an intimate Copenhagen property she designed with her Lind + Almond co-founder Richy Almond. Of all the warm Scandinavian furnishings the duo used to transform three late-1800s houses into a cozy hotel, one stood out in particular: […]
Kitchen of the Week: A Plain English Kitchen in a Brooklyn Brownstone, Space-Gaining Bay Window Included
After 11 years of living in their Brooklyn brownstone, architect Anat Soudry’s friends were ready: they wanted to replace the Ikea shoebox kitchen that came with their otherwise well-preserved 1889 townhouse. John and Danielle—he’s a magazine journalist; she’s an early education teacher and former fashion designer—are aesthetes who love to cook and have three young […]
Archival-Quality Danish Design: Hotel Petra from &Tradition in Copenhagen
When I was last in Copenhagen, I found myself picking up a daily coffee at Lille Petra, a cafe designed and operated by &Tradition and tucked into the courtyard of the brand’s showroom. Now, &Tradition extends its offering with Hotel Petra, a 40-room boutique hotel in a landmark building meticulously restored by the brand. Like […]
Earthly and Ethereal: An Apartment Makeover by Studio Oink
This apartment belongs to a fashion designer and a priest (you can chew on that, but the owners insist on anonymity). Here’s what we know: They live in a historic mill building on the outskirts of Mainz, in Western Germany, and they have very good taste. When they signed the lease on their flat—a single-story, 150-square-meter (1,614-square-foot) space—it was “cluttered […]
Block Shop in Bed: Lily and Hopie Stockman’s New Linens Collection
Last week we toured Block Shop’s Mod LA Headquarters. Today, we’re taking a look at the company’s just-launched bedding designs. Sisters Lily and Hopie Stockman, the company founders and in-house designers, spent two years working with master printers and dyers in Jaipur, India, to get every detail, down to the duvet corner ties, exactly as […]
A Kitchen for the People, Courtesy of Prince Charles
When Prince Charles collaborated with UK-based kitchen makers Plain English on a model house, he wanted to know: “How can we get this to the people?” The answer is the beloved kitchen company’s lower-priced British Standard Cupboard line, offered at “sensible prices for discerning folk of modest means.” A longtime campaigner for sustainable living, Prince […]
Adding Energy Efficiency and Revived Style to 1860s Quarters in Brooklyn
The 1860s brick row house in Brooklyn’s Boerum Hill had a lot going for it: tall ceilings, lacy moldings, marble mantels, and a gracious floor plan that had served its residents untouched. The HVAC system was also more or less original. It presented the longstanding owners—an eco-minded couple who had raised their children here—with an […]
A Classic English Country House Receives a Mood-Lifting Injection of Color
London interior designer Nicola Harding was the right person to turn to. Her clients, a couple with two young boys, were leaving London for rural Berkshire and life in a Georgian brick manse. They appreciated the grandeur of their house—8,600 square feet, seven bedrooms—but how to downplay the stuffy formality and lend the spaces the […]
Required Reading: Daily Rituals
Does everyone long to find a daily ritual that unleashes new powers of invention, efficiency, focus–and hours of free time? As a habitual night worker (and morning sleeper), I certainly do. Which makes reading Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals a great pleasure, if only to find that none of us are alone in our oddball routines […]
Kitchen of the Week: Stylist Brittany Albert’s Cosmetic Kitchen Upgrade, Trade Secrets Included
Brittany Alberts’s lament is a familiar one: “If budget hadn’t been a consideration, we would have loved to expand the footprint of our kitchen. And we would have loved to put in new cabinets and appliances. Instead, we had to stick with—and enhance what—was already in place.” The wrinkle? Brittany is a stylist who works […]
Next-Level Flip: A Design Couple Lovingly Transforms a 1630s House in Antwerp
Architect Thomas Maria and designer Ann Butaye are a Belgian husband-and-wife team who have recently dedicated their practice to historic house flipping. In their designs, the two use only natural, eco-friendly materials and focus on restoration and renewal. After Ann had a serious health scare a few years ago, creating healing environments also became their […]
10 Easy Pieces: Best Cribs for Babies
With any luck, a new baby will spend the majority of his or her first year sleeping. So it makes sense that expecting parents start feathering the nest by choosing a crib. For me, I knew that my husband and I would be welcoming a baby into a small New York City apartment without a […]
The Architects’ Choice: Hix Island House in Vieques, Puerto Rico
Our architect friend Elizabeth Roberts clued us in a while back to her (and many fellow designers’) favorite winter escape: Hix Island House, a wabi-sabi, eco-friendly hotel in Vieques. Here’s her account. “Designed by Toronto-based architect John Hix, Hix Island House is a perfect blank slate for viewing the surrounding nature; the contrast of the rugged, […]
A Glamorous Hollywood Dressing Room from Alexandra Loew
Every page we tear out, every image we pin, we fantasize about the way we want to live. And if your personal fantasy is not available in print or online, then Los Angeles architect and designer Alexandra Loew can probably help you out. With a view that “fantasy is a critical dimension of contemporary life […]
10 Things Nobody Tells You About the Benefits of Wool
In addition to linen and cotton, wool is one of our tried-and-true, go-to textiles for all over the house. It’s both hardy (as in a dependable wool rug) and luxurious (as in soft sheepskin blankets), and we love the way it looks in all its forms. But wool has other benefits, too: It’s eco-friendly, water-resistant, […]
Kitchen of the Week: ‘Rustic Modernism’ in the Berkshires From the Team Behind Tourists Welcome
Five years ago, we wrote about the arrival of TOURISTS Welcome: The Hip Berkshires Escape Everyone’s Talking About. This summer, the TOURISTS team added to its growing compound, with two newly remodeled vacation home rentals (just a 10-minute walk “through the woods and across the river” from the lodge in North Adams, MA). Both homes […]
Kitchen of the Week: A Japanophile’s Handcrafted Kitchen on the Sussex Coast
Brothers Hugh and Howard Miller trained as architects before turning their attention, as the duo H Miller Bros, to kitchens, furniture, products and sometimes even gardens (they won a silver gilt medal for their Urban Foraging Station design for at the Chelsea Flower Show earlier this year). Their work is people-centered and their latest kitchen, […]