Decor & Accessories

We’ve featured quite a few places by A+B Kasha before: this Paris-based real estate and design firm excels at creating meticulously detailed apartments where just the walls and floors themselves are a work of art. My current favorite project of theirs is a little jewel of a one-bedroom, 270 square feet of perfection tucked away on the top floor of a 19th-century building in Paris’ 6th arrondissement.

What we have here is a dozen unabashed, Warhol- and Lichtenstein-inspired rooms that would look right at home in a pop art museum as they do inside these homes. If you love bright colors and retro styling, get thee to Pinterest and save these shots for later. It’s part aspiration and part inspiration. As big and bold as these rooms are, there are some pretty do-able ideas in here. Do you have any pop art-inspired pieces at home?

Why settle for an oversized piece of art when you could have a piece of art that covers the whole wall? These 11 murals will have a big, big impact—hang one on the wall and your decorating job is pretty much done. A quick note to start: a wall mural differentiates from wallpaper in that it does not repeat. It’s an entire scene stretch across a determined width, while wallpaper matches up and repeats indefinitely.

How much joy does your home bring you? Do you have a lot of design moments that make you smile? Do the rooms in your home showcase things that make you happy? Filling your home with visual joy doesn’t need to be a complicated task; we spotted seven easy (and affordable) ways to celebrate happiness using your home in one of our recent tours. (Pictured above) Pick a corner, any corner! Can be a guest room that you don’t go into every day. Can be a cramped bathroom. The laundry room.

It’s Valentine’s Day, which means that the two-lobed shape that we somehow recognize as representing a human heart is suddenly everywhere. There are heart-shaped candies, cards, chocolates, even heart-shaped pizzas. And many years ago, one man had the idea of building a heart-shaped hot tub… and a movement was born.

Though there are some downsides to living in a studio apartment — not having as much space for your stuff, feeling like you’re living in your bedroom — it can be a cozy and fun living experience, too. Stick to these design tricks when decorating a studio apartment and you’ll love studio living. Don’t have a bedroom but do have a closet you can fit a bed into? Or is there a way to drape curtains around your bed to create a private bed nook?

The LACK wall shelf is a much more versatile piece than you might think. By twisting and turning and stacking it, you can put this $49 shelf to work in your home in myriad ways.

It’s always fun flipping through an IKEA catalog, looking at all the new stuff, and imagining how it might look in our own home. Their winter holiday collection is an extra bonus this time of year, filled with festive decorations and — most importantly — fresh decorating and styling ideas. Above, garland hung from the ceiling above, and around doorways, is perfect when space is at a premium. Create a unique decorative element on the wall using leftover ornaments.

Jenn & Hunter’s Historic Landmark Apartment Traditional rugs are traditional for a reason. Even though they are densely patterned and filled with a multitude of colors, they somehow still manage to go with everything. I’ve rounded up a bunch of rooms from our House Tours that feature these gorgeous rugs—pale, bright, deep, rich, red, blue, yellow: you name it, they’re all here.

The moving process is only as difficult as you make it out to be. If you’re hangry and disorganized the whole time, you’ll come away from the move having lost some really important things like your mind, your time and your grandmother’s china. Thankfully, it turns out being one of those hyper-organized people who have it all together is really, really simple. An organized move comes down to having organized moving boxes.

Name: Thomas & Erin Galvin, with Olive the cat Location: Echo Park; Los Angeles, CA Size: 530 square feet Years lived in: 2 years; Rented As a new House Tour contributor, I thought the best way for us to get to know each other would be to take you on an extra special house tour of my own apartment. My husband Thomas and I moved in on the heels of a very stressful living situation, determined to make our new apartment into a space that energizes us and helps us recharge.

There are plenty of reasons to decorate your house key. Like if you need to tell it apart from other keys. Or maybe it’s just because you just love a little something extra. Either way, I wouldn’t say these DIY projects are for everyone, but if you’re so inclined, here are 10 easy ways you can jazz up a boring house key. Grab some nail polish and lets get started.

Name: Echo Kao Location: Toy District; Los Angeles, CA Size: 870 square feet Years lived in: 1 years; Owned I knew that Echo was a talented industrial designer, but I was still surprised to learn that every night when she went home she was carefully crafting her own furniture. Her life and her work go hand-in-hand, which is reflected perfectly in the fact that her home has three(!) work spaces for her to spread out in.

Name: Timothy Location: Bed-Stuy; Brooklyn, NY Size: 1,680 square feet Years lived in: 3 years; Owned A home with global flair doesn’t necessarily have to mean a visually noisy space or an overwhelming, over-the-top collection of knick-knacks. Nomad-inspired homes can be tidy and effortless, and I can tell you that after this house tour you’ll want to book an around-the-world ticket to source beautiful material and wander in some faraway markets.

Name: Ricky & McCary Location: Carroll Gardens/Gowanus; Brooklyn, New York Size: 800 square feet Years lived in: 6 years; Rented What do you get when two people with great taste move in together? A beautiful apartment like this one, where two design sensibilities (she loves prints and patterns, while he’s a bit more minimal) merge seamlessly to create a new, completely unique style. Ricky and McCary are also the stars of the sixth episode of Apartment Therapy’s A Line video series.

Name: Amanda Holstein and her dog, Auggie Location: Greenwich Village; New York, NY Size: 400-450 square feet Years lived in: 1 year; Rented Amanda lives on a great street in Manhattan, full of life and energy. When you walk into her apartment, you are immediately transported from the iconic Greenwich Village neighborhood to somewhere calm and relaxing. She has fit her colorful, laid-back style into a classic New York apartment beautifully.

Name: Max Shay and Emily Billings Location: Western Massachusetts Size: 3,200 square feet Years lived in: 9 months; Rented Max and I moved to Western Massachusetts on a whim after deciding to close the book on our city-dwelling life in Boston. We stumbled upon the 1930s stone farmhouse set up on a steep hill through Craigslist. After hearing about the history of the property through the homeowners, we were sold.

Big or small. Traditional or modern. All homes have different styles, but they all have similarities at the heart of them, too. And these four pieces of universal advice can be applied to just about any home you’ve lived in or will live in. So print them out and keep them around. This works for just about any decision you’ve got to make. From which home to choose when you’re on the search, to which sofa to buy, to what color to paint the walls and more. Decisions are tough.

Name: Kaelie, Andrew, and Zootie the cat Location: Top of the Tower, Heritage Hill; Grand Rapids, MI Size: 1,000 square feet Years lived in: 2 years; Rented Tyler from the Musical Chairs House Tour texts me on a random Saturday: “I have a referral for you!” His friend Kaelie and her husband live in a “sweet Heritage Hill apartment.” I email Kaelie and once we determine a day, she suggests I photograph their home in the early evening to capture the best light.

Name: Lindsey Grissom Location: Andersonville; Chicago, IL Size: 1,400 square feet Years lived in: 5 years; Rented Lindsey has lived in her 3rd floor apartment for 5 years, but she’s lived in this same building, in Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood for a good chunk of her life. She grew up in the 1st floor apartment where her parents still live, and now shares the 3rd floor with her two tortoises, Yurtle and Olive.

Location: Los Angeles, CA Size: 2,000 square feet Years lived in: 7 months; Owned Nestled in the winding hills of Hollywood, this mid-century modern post and beam home was recently snatched up by two art-lovers and transformed into a striking minimalist masterpiece. Natural sunlight flooding in through large, unobstructed windows and skylights reflects brilliantly off the white walls, white cement flooring, and blonde wood furniture inside. Needless to say, this place is seriously dreamy.

Name: Sanja Kerr Location: East Lakeview, Chicago, Illinois Years lived in: 2 years; Rented Size: 550 square feet Clean lines and a feast for the eyes are what you get when you combine cool mid-century simplicity and an eclectic art collection. Sanja Kerr’s charming one bedroom Chicago apartment in the Lakeview neighborhood is full of striking, well-executed design decisions that took careful planning and multiple attempts to get perfect- you can’t use black paint on just any wall!

In most of the glamorous homes you see on decorating websites, the living room, dining room, kitchen, and bedroom are all separate spaces. So what are you to do when you’ve living in an apartment that is really just a single room with a stove and a sink on one end? Take inspiration from this collection of super stylish studio apartments. As these spaces prove, living in one room doesn’t have to mean sacrificing style.

Remember Paula and Paul’s fantastic house tour from a few weeks ago which showed off their enviable art and collectables in various areas of the house? We’re focusing on the crowning glory of that amazing gallery wall to give the rest of us some pointers on how to keep a staid feature alive with new possibilities. 1.

Name: Jason & John of Madcap Cottage Location: Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn Size: 2,800 square feet, Tudor-style single family home Years lived in: 4 years “Green is our neutral,” explains Jason, as my jaw drops. Everything in Jason and John’s house that can have color does. And every color is saturated. I can’t stop smiling and sometimes I have to laugh out loud for the sheer joy of it. John and Jason have a long history and familiarity with design.