Everyone Was Obsessed With This Home’s Wildly One-of-a-Kind Design Details

Apartment Therapy publishes a dizzying array of stunning home tours all year long (one each weekday, actually!) so it can be very difficult to pick favorites. (For me, your House Tour Director, it’s actually impossible to choose a favorite.) But that doesn’t mean there aren’t certain tours that resonate with our readers a little bit extra — real homes that have been designed so thoughtfully and cleverly that their details stay with you long after you’ve finished reading. 

Thankfully, you don’t have to rely simply on your memory when it comes to cataloging your favorite rooms and details from our house tours. You can save whole house tours and individual images when you’re logged into your profile on AT using the “save” button, as well as organize inspiration into Vision Boards you can revisit anytime you need ideas. 

While we have absolutely no way to see what individual AT users are saving, we can see which tours are saved the most. And there was one home this year that you all simply could not get enough of. 

Apartment Therapy users saved Christine Leahy and Nik Sparks’ very cool DIYed 750-square-foot Brooklyn loft almost 100 times this year! 

At the time of their home tour, the couple had spent two years personalizing their apartment — located in a building constructed in 1905 — into a space that works for them both. The couple had to get creative with their design solutions, though, as they don’t own the space. Christine explained in the tour that the building was converted into housing in 2000, and that it started as “essentially, a big empty box” with sparse and industrial vibes.

The couple was actually able to salvage a few of the DIY wooden elements from Christine’s previous home, a 350-square-foot studio, in this new space. The bookshelf/stairs from the small studio apartment found a home as a room divider in the new home, and other lumber from the studio was repurposed for things like a kitchen island, table, and benches. Even the curtains from Christine’s previous studio found a new home in here, as a room divider.

I obviously can’t see into the minds of every reader who saved this stunning image of the couple’s rental home, but I can take some educated guesses about what it is that resonates. Their home is maximal, full of fun elements, but it doesn’t feel too cluttered or overwhelming. The organizing tools in the home — from hand-built shelves to repurposed IKEA cabinets — hold tons of things, but do so neatly as well as stylishly. 

The space isn’t exactly tiny, but because it’s all one room, the way the couple figured out how to visually and physically divide the space is just inspiring. A bookshelf next to the bed helps distinguish between the living room and the bedroom area. And that repurposed curtain-turned-room divider visually blocks work areas from the living space, without blocking out light. 

It’s a totally one-of-a-kind home. And while it’s gorgeous to look at, it’s not entirely unattainable for those with a little creative vision and DIY know-how. It’s packed full of inspiration, so it’s no surprise so many readers saved images from it this year!