paint

Yves Klein’s Interior Inspirations, From Ultimate Blue to His Unusual Do-able Table

A single rare image of Yves Klein’s Paris apartment/studio got us hunting for his plexiglass coffee table filled with astonishing blue pigment he commissioned. We found A LOT of inspiration.

Two-Tone Half-Painted Optical Illusion Chairs

Lately we’ve seen some classic old second-hand store chairs transformed with paint in a way we hadn’t considered, to very cool effect.

Hurricane Destruction Transformed into a Startling Work of Art

Transformation is a theme we focus on a lot: the making of something out of what seems like nothing. Resourceful people transmute their circumstance, something they’ve found, to make something with meaning or new uses. Artist Katharina Grosse has done that mightily with the wreckage of Fort Tilden, an army base in the Rockaways that was…

A Solution for Paint-Crusted Moldings and Doors

Recently I skyped with a colleague who just moved into a prewar rental in Brooklyn; she asked me to see if I could come up with solutions to the various challenges imposed by the wonderful but imperfect and not-hers-to-renovate space. So we did a video tour of her space. (I hope show some before and after’s…

Copy This: Painting Geometries on Your Wall, or Floor

We are smitten with this radical optical-illusion color block. Even without the table and chairs, there is something thrillingly startling about painting a bright, bold geometry over everything on a wall. (When we search GEOMETRY on Improvised Life, we find it a recurring theme. Perhaps because it seems like a do-able way to shift a room using…

Nomad Designer Transforms Found Furniture Each Time He Moves

Netherlands-based Designer Francois Duquesnoy is a nomad at heart. Instead of moving heavy furniture everytime he changes living space, he prefers to use whatever discarded items he finds in his new surroundings and transmute them. Sometimes, he splices objects together. More often, he simply paints what he finds, every detail in the same color. As with…

Splatter Decor: Splattered Paint as Home Design Element

During our obsessive rampage at AQQ Index the other day, we came across several examples of Pollock Inspired splatters on walls and floors; we realized what a cool design element they can be.

More Fab Dirty Pink Walls: Kitchen in the Veneto

Maria Robledo, who advised us to paint a bedroom wall “dirty pink”, sent us a great example of the subtle, muted, every changing hue of pink.

freehand half-painted wall and…ipad sleeve and…

When we first saw the yellow freehand painted two-tone wall at Style-Files (below), we were of two minds: good idea but something held us back. Then we came started to come across an iteration Remodelista found at the Norwegian company Lady Premium Paint & Colors blog that made us think it held lots of possibilities. Out-of-the-blue we spotted the freehand-by-brush…

diy fab painted house numbers

We’ve browsed endless catalogues that feature chic, expensive house numbers. We’ve always preferred the ones Isabel Rower devised out of washi tape. Then we saw THIS wonderful graphic house number done in ordinary paint. It could be any size and color(s) you want. The trick would be in finding or making a template that makes…