cool spaces

Laura Handler’s White Painted Floors: How-To

On the continuing theme of the viability and ‘how-to’ of white-painted floors —sparked by a reader’s question —we asked designer Laura Handler how she painted the parquet floors of her 1950’s coop white. Here’s what she wrote:

Clever Art n’ Objet Ledge Headboard is DIY-able

Spotted at vtvonen: a clever, long, ledge that doubles as a head board and picture/object rail. Look closely and you’ll see that it is painted wood. We’re thinking “plywood box…easy enough to put together. It covers a lot of ground, keeping the room spaceious, with lots of room to place objets. via Vosge Paris

Basho Haiku for Cabin Porn

The other morning, we opened our favorite book of haiku to this astonishing three lines by Basho, written in the 17th century. Life in this world— a makeshift hut like Sogi’s. Such pleasure, contentment, and wonder in a simple makeshift hut made us think of ones we’ve admired…

Essential Lessons about White Painted Floors

Recently, a reader wrote us about our white painted floors: Your white floors look amazing. How are they holding up over time? I’m interested in doing the same in my house but there are lots of naysayers saying they won’t be durable enough to retain the sleek look. I love my pale floors which are…

Tiny Transforming Apartment Yields One Big Idea

(Video link HERE.) We find this video of a tiny apartment* in which each piece of furniture transforms into something else strangely compelling, all the while feeling that having to transform EVERYTHING in our place would drive us mad. It did give us some ideas, one in particular that solves a design problem we been struggling…

8+ Strategies for Redecorating an Ugly Hotel Room

Being very sensitive to spaces, we have long been big on tailoring hotel rooms to our own sensibility and personal feng shui. Photos of the newly renovated Hôtel Baume in Paris made us think of the many strategies we’ve developed over years of traveling to shift the feeling of not-quite-right, often OVER-decorated hotel rooms and make them more comfortable. Here are our tricks and tips, with examples:

‘My Only Religion is Love of the Work to Be Created’: Matisse

In this beautiful video, Morgan Meis visits Chapelle du Rosier de Vence, the chapel Matisse called his “masterpiece”. The short film is a wonderful interplay of the chapel itself and clips of Matisse working. Meis’ commentary illuminates what it’s like to experience the spare space, as well as Matisse’s process and motivations:

Lost Bohemia: Inside Carnegie Hall’s Artist Studios

(Video link HERE.) For over 100 years,some of the 20th century’s most significant artists and performers lived and worked in the 165 studios that lay hidden atop Carnegie Hall. The studios were rented by creative people of all stripes, from fashion designers to painters and ballerinas, an eccentric mix to be sure. Some lived there.…

Le Corbusier’s Wall Built Tight-to-The Window, and Ours

This image of a room in Villa Savoye, the Le Corbusier-designed modernist villa in the outskirts of Paris, defies notions we had previously held about the WRONGNESS of having a wall run right into a window. That is what we encountered when we bought our laboratory space; we saw it as a major design flaw,…

Painted Oriented Strand Board Floors

Remodelista recently featured the clever redesign of a 430-square foot-apartment in a century-old row house in Antwerp, the work of Belgian architecture firm Komaan! —translation, “Come on!” It’s full of good ideas, including clever layout that creates a fluid space with lots of storage, and interesting use of plywood, but our favorite is the floors: sheets of…

Make a Bathroom a ROOM with rugs, paintings, objects

We recently stumbled across a couple of images from Decoracion, which features the work of Spanish interior designer Jaime Parladé. We love Parladé’s use of the elements of a living room: a cotton rug, a shelf of objects, a painting, unexpected tiles, a basket trunk, to give a bathroom a more UNbathroom like feel. Of all the elements in the…

Matisse Painted with Scissors (You can Too!)

Reader Zoe Komaransky writes about Matisse wondrous cut-out art. When he became so ill that he was bedridden or wheelchair bound and could no longer paint, he switched to making art with scissors and paper. Watching him inspires us to do the same.

Interiors Painted in the Style of Famous Artists

At Brand New Paint Job, artist Jon Rafman overlays the visual style of iconic artists onto rooms and objects, from a Fernand Leger Bomb to a Cy Twombly Lamborghini. We were especially struck by Rafman’s interiors which seem completely viable, while instantly shifting our view. We would love go sleep in the Paul Klee Master Bedroom, above, or go…

Surprising Painted Patterns on Floors, Walls, Ceilings

Why buy rugs to roll out on your floors, when you can paint them? Why collect art when you can decorate walls, floors and ceiling, with found materials? I’m smitten by these two wildly different, improvisational ways that artists have used paint to mimic and displace art in such disparate places as a house on the…

Playing with a Mashup of Modernist and Classical

We found ourselves curiously relieved when we came across this very modern space whose design was “broken” by classical antiques, a far cry from many of today’s sterile mid-century-esque interiors. But we weren’t crazy about the fussy chandeliers that festoons the place, so we photoshopped one out TO SEE WHAT WOULD HAPPEN.

Why Not Sleep on the Roof in a…Sky Parlour?

We recently read that President Taft had a sleeping porch built (below) on the roof of the White House in the 20’s. On hot summer nights, the first family could sleep up there to cool off. It allowed the President retreat up there to chill and look out over Washington. We love sleeping outdoors too.
We’re always on the lookout for cool impermanent shacks— “sky parlors” — that can be erected on a roof, a yard, even indoors as a rustic office or private space.

Why Not Really WIDE Moldings?

Found on the great Aqqindex, which almost fetishizes design from the 70’s and 80’s: a vew of Ettore Sottsass and Aldo Cibic’s design of the Munari Apartment, from 1983. Dig thos wide, spare moulding around the door, the opposite in moderne uber-minimalist, and very exprensive none-at all moldings. Rather then the usual 2-inch wide compromise,…

Stylish Repurposed Tables from RioEtc

When we start poking around the google translate version of rioetc.com.br, a site meant to show the stylish side of Rio, we found, over several separate posts some compelling mashups of tables. The first, the coffee table, above, which appears to be made of mismatched crates, some with wheels, some not, and a cubist hunk of…is…

House Tour with Life Lessons: Tom Fallon’s Shelter Island Cottage

When our friend Tom Fallon’s Shelter Island cottage was featured in Hamptons Cottages & Gardens, we realized just how many lessons about home design and LIFE we learned from him over the years. Here they are, with pictures by Jason Penney.

In Praise of Shadows and Quiet, Muted Interiors

I’ve been yearning for shadows since June 21st when the world took a tumble towards autumn, trailing crayon-bright, midsummer color and loud solstice revels. Parched by the bleached Scandinavian cottages and austere, no-tint white rooms that are everywhere online, I’m craving soothing darkness and a place to sequester in silence. This stark, in-your-face, white duvet bedroom suddenly hurts my eyes…and…

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