Our apartment is truly one of my favorite places in the world. There’s something so comforting when we’re coming home from weekends away and our travels when we walk through the door and drop our bags.
If you’re new around here, you should hear about how tough it was for us to find this apartment and you can see some of the progress we made and our decor decisions when we first moved in. I’ve actually never been able to do this type of post before, because none of my places have really been big enough to actually photograph the whole room. Pause for a little New York City laugh and shake of the head.
Decorating a new space is incredibly challenging and something that I’ve historically been very intimidated by. I really wanted to document our process to show that it’s doable for someone who doesn’t focus on interior design for a living or just “has that knack for it” – no. It really takes a sh*t ton of research, googling, Pinteresting, and hunting to create a space from scratch. When we moved into this room we only had a bed and a mirror and everything else we were starting over with. It was a lot of fun getting to style the room out exactly as we wanted, but also challenging to see how it would all come together.
I’m an extremely visual person and one of those people who needs to know every detail in order to plan something like this out. Thankfully we had a floorplan that we were given for our unit (which is uncommon in New York City to be honest) and that allowed us to put real dimensions to each of the walls. The bedroom space has a few cutouts that made the planning and furniture piece very tricky. I agonized over the measurements of these walls so many late nights checking against furniture specs to be sure. There’s nothing like finally nailing down a piece of furniture and getting it all the way up to your walk up apartment to find it’s 1/2 of an inch too big for the space. You live and you learn.. buy a tape measure!
When we first saw the space we were immediately drawn to the view. Having a virtual floor to ceiling window that overlooks the Hudson from your room is extremely rare and special, so we really wanted to make sure that we could enjoy the view everyday. Originally we had planned on putting the bed on the longer wall, but once we had our keys and went back to see it a few nights before we moved in MG actually suggested we put it on the short wall so that we would wake up with the better view looking North instead of South towards our neighbors. It was a genius idea that has made all of the difference in the world in how our room feels. It also meant that one person would have a weird wall next to them instead of a side table, but neither of us had side tables at all in our old places so these were accommodations we were willing to make.
In the end, it really turned out perfect for us. I haven’t gone over the top with decor and kept our bedroom very minimal and simple. Really I wanted the focus to be on the view and for it to be a place that we couldn’t wait to retreat to at the end of every day. Less is more and I didn’t want it to feel cluttered or too busy.
So without any further ado, here’s a look!
BEFORE
Our floorplan with my dimension notes
AFTER
Our room slowly came together over time. I did my best to do as much of the research as possible before showing things to MG – finding the right pieces in the right specs at the best price takes a lot of digging. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about decorating a place with your significant other, it’s to cater to their strengths. MG has incredible taste thanks to his lovely mother and sister, but the idea of searching through pages and pages of products would make him want to claw his eyes out. On the other hand I’m good at finding options and just need someone to tell me one way or the other which is the best. I did most of the heavy lifting with the online searching (although we did go in person together for a lot of the furniture in the living room) and then created little collections of each group of products and showed him. We’d pick which layout and products we liked the most and boom, purchased
Outside of the furniture I knew that I wanted to do a gallery wall in our room above the dresser and focus on pictures that were meaningful. On our respective sides of the bed we have these gorgeous brass lamps, smaller photos of our closest friends and on my bedside table you’ll find chapstick, hand cream, a candle and my eye mask.
We kept our bedding super simple – I love all white and since we don’t have pets or children it’s still doable. We’ve loved our Parachute bedding and just paired it with these chevron euro shams for some texture. The lumbar pillow is old and I’m still looking for one to replace it with (why are pillows so tough!?), although now am leaning towards a smaller pillow with an embroidered “G”. What do you think?
In keeping with the simplicity of our room, I wanted to find something to go over the bed that wouldn’t be too distracting. It just felt like something was missing before we found this piece from World Market. It was light & easy to hang and really adds a focal point on that wall. MG is obsessed with World Market now – if you ask him it’s his favorite store from all of our apartment shopping.
Our room is very us, and that’s really all that we wanted. There are tons of decor trends and bolder patterns and colors we could’ve gone with, but at the end of the day it’s simple and cozy and that’s what we love about it.
Stay tuned for more photos of the rest of our apartment!
GET THE LOOK
Bed: Crate and Barrel
Bedding: Parachute Venice Set c/o, Anthropologie chevron shams
Wall Decor: World Market whitewashed wood shaila wall decor
Nightstand (L): White ‘X’ nightstand
Nightstand (R): One drawer nightstand
Bedside lamps: Brass table lamps
Dresser: Bermuda dresser
Lamp: Serena and Lily Brighton table lamp
Jewelry Stand: Urban Outfitters jewelry stand
Frames: Gallery frames
Tall Dresser: Clarendon 5 drawer chest (changed out knobs with ones from Home Depot)
Dresser decor: Round brass lantern
Rug: nuLOOM Persian ivory area rug
Photos by Bekka Palmer