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Maybe you’ve sensed a shift in the world of interior design back toward more traditional, ornate spaces — your social media feeds and favorite magazine pages flooded with homes featuring crown and picture frame molding, classic plaid upholstery, board-and-batten walls, and stately Persian rugs. Homes with original character have long been coveted, but a renewed reverence for traditional details seems to be playing out in the housing market and many of home renovations I’m seeing right now on Instagram and TikTok. Renters are getting in on the action in reversible ways, and those that have moved into more modern homes are also emulating these intricate details to add character to otherwise bland spaces.
So far, a lot of the DIYing in this mini-design movement has centered on adding some classic architectural features. But what if I told you though that the latest (and maybe most-budget friendly?) iteration of the adding vintage character trend has people reaching for paint cans and brushes versus their tool boxes? That’s right, trompe-l’oeil (French for “to fool the eye”) architectural charm is trendy, old-meets-new paint application. Translation: Instead of hanging moldings or picture frame trim, people are starting to paint them instead.
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Take this 500-square-foot studio rented by Calvin Hrezik, for example. The apartment itself is fairly standard for New York City living: plain white walls, wood floors, and not a whole lot of living space. In spite of that, Hrezik has created an opulent, Parisian-feeling home — not only with furnishings and decor, but also the clever use of paint. An interior designer by trade, he thought outside the box to add character into a “blank canvas of a box” apartment. “I brought in my oh-so-talented muralist friend Colton Ackerman to collaborate on trompe-l’œil paintings throughout but in a cartoonish, campy, ‘Mary Poppins’ way,” he says.
The entry hallway is home to a row of closets painted entirely in Benjamin Moore’s San Antonio Rose (027) for a cohesive, enveloping look. On top of that peachy-orange base, the duo created whimsical, almost doodle-like renderings of picture frame molding in a contrasting red color. Benjamin Moore’s Coastal Cottage (1164) rules the living space, where painted garlands and curtains extend down from the apartment’s ceiling line. “The tassels dance on the tops of the Benjamin Moore Coastal Cottage walls around the main area,” Hrezik adds, “tying off a faux curtain into the entrance and closet hallway, complete with a painting of my cat, Disco Stardust, participating in her favorite pastime of pawing at pigeons.”
In the bathroom, you’ll find even more fool-the-eye fodder, this time in the form of “wallpaper.” Here, Hrezik commissioned Ackerman to paint “frames filled with a few of my favorite things, inspired by the idea of flooding all of the bathroom walls with my queer art collection.” The color used for these whimsical outlines was Benjamin Moore’s Gentleman’s Gray (2062-20), and the design sits above the bath’s tall blue tiled wainscoting in the shower surround.
Sure, these painted features may be a little more stylized than your typical crown molding or box panels, but there’s no denying that the painted mural trend could be headed from abstract geometric shapes and arches into this trompe-l’oeil territory.
While this trend requires some skill and time, it’s a super-budget friendly way to add character and charm to your home. You can freehand these designs if you’re comfortable with that or team up with a pro like Hrezik did. When it comes to picture frame molding in particular though, the look can be really achieved with just a few colors and some strategic measuring, painting, and taping to create the shadows that pieces of real molding would cast. I can’t wait to see more of this in 2023 because the year is young for paint ideas!
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This past spring, like many New Yorkers, I got the rug pulled out from under me and was forced to move out of an apartment I loved due to a drastic price increase ($1200 per month). The difference for me was that the whole internet watched it happen. I posted a video tour of my apartment to see if anyone would try to apply to the apartment and KEEP all the murals I had created, because otherwise, the management company would make me cover up my artwork. The video went viral on TikTok and I had hundreds of people message me with legitimate interest in finding info on how to apply, and I tried my best, but the management company refused to see the value in my artwork despite the thousands of people who were willing to pay even higher than they had listed the space for to be able to keep the murals. They refused to give my security deposit back unless they were covered, even if the new tenants wanted the work.
Once all that nonsense was taken care of, I was on the hunt for a new space during the worst market NYC has seen for renters in years. Keep in mind, I stayed in NYC through the worst of the pandemic and at this point had lived alone for two years. I run my own business, am active on social media, and was not looking to go back to roommate life at 30 years old. But being an artist, my budget was low (for NYC standards) and pickings were slim.
Finally, by a stroke of luck, I saw a one-bedroom listed on Craigslist in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, for $1800. At this point, the only apartments I had seen at that price were in unsafe neighborhoods, smaller in size, and didn’t have full kitchens. So I was beyond desperate and this place almost looked too good to be true.
I got there, viewed the space, and knew I had to jump on it. There were NO closets — that’s right, not one — but I could work with it. The bedroom would be very tiny and wouldn’t fit my side table, but I could work with it. The kitchen cabinets didn’t all match, but I could work with it. The sunlight was gorgeous. The walk to the subway was two minutes. The neighborhood was safe. I knew it would be mine.
Apartment Therapy Survey:
My Style: Funky, eclectic, colorful, joyful
Inspiration: Current fashion trends, color palettes I find on Pinterest, vintage finds
Favorite Element: My mural. It’s different than anything I’ve ever painted for myself or a client and it brings me so much joy.
Biggest Challenge: The bedroom size and layout was tough. The whole space is only about eight feet by eight feet, which meant my queen-size bed would be up against one wall and the dresser on the other. My bedside table had to go into storage because the door would hit it.
The other biggest challenge was storage — NO closets. I had to outsource and buy three large wardrobes from IKEA — but I made it work and I actually love that I got to customize my various storage options like clothing racks, drawers, and shelves.
Proudest DIY:THE KITCHEN. Man this was an overhaul. Covering my cabinets (safely with no damage) took HOURS of work. But I am so glad I committed because each day that I looked at the wood stains that didn’t match each other, I hated it more and more. Since the main space is all one room, there’s no avoiding seeing the kitchen, especially since I am so often taking photos and videos of my space.
Budget: I pay $1800 a month. Any New Yorker who understand the boroughs and their pricing for studios/one bedrooms will realize how insanely lucky I got with this price, even if the space isn’t perfect. Almost everything is the same from my last apartment. I had to buy two items to make this space work. One was a splurge at $1500 for my closet and its components from IKEA. The other was smaller side table from IKEA for $120.
Is there something unique about your home or the way you use it? I would say for the most part, my home is arranged in a traditional way. The difference for me is that since I also work at home, a lot of my storage is used up by business supplies, like paints, brushes, and other mural necessities. That will soon change as I just signed a lease for my very first art studio space!
Please describe any helpful, inspiring, brilliant, or just plain useful small space maximizing and/or organizing tips you have: I have become a master at organizing my small spaces because for an NYC girl, I have a lot of stuff. Beyond your usual clothes, shoes, and makeup, I also have to keep my art supplies at home so maximizing the space is essential. My best tips is to get solid furniture with drawer/cabinet space. A large dresser is a must. A wardrobe/armoire with doors that close versus something with a glass/open front. This will help you to hide away the stuff that makes a space feel cluttered. Then within those pieces of furniture, dividers or bins are a necessity.
Finally, what’s your absolute best home secret or decorating advice? My best advice is to be bold — if you see something that inspires you while you’re out shopping, but you don’t know how you would decorate using those colors, just buy it and let the rest of the pieces fall into place. Not everything is going to “go” perfectly together. Collect items over time that you fall in love with build around them instead of fighting against your instinct.
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Name:Emma Chasen (@phillyfunhouse on Tiktok) with fiancée Carolyn Chernous and our two cats, Winx and Scout Location: Manayunk — Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Size: 1403 square feet Type of Home: Victorian row home Years Lived In: 1 year, owned
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“Our home is a 100+ year old Victorian row home in the Roxborough-Manayunk neighborhood of Philadelphia,” begins Emma Chasen, a grad student with a love for bold style and a first-time homeowner. “The character of the home immediately stood out. In this neighborhood and many other neighborhoods of Philly, there are a lot of shoddy flips. The new construction is flashy on the surface but can’t really be trusted.”
But Emma says this 1403-square-foot house wasn’t one of those shoddy flips, and that’s part of what attracted her and fiancée, Carolyn Chernous, to it in the first place. “It had been with the same family since the ’80s and had such a quirky character about it,” Emma continues. “Plus, the house is literally solid as a rock — the walls are made of stone and it has been impeccably cared for by the previous owners. It has some really good bones. The house is also on a corner lot, so it was only attached to one other home at the back of the house. This is such a rare find for a Philly rowhome and allows for so much natural light in the space, which is incredibly important to me.”
“When we first toured our home, my fiancée got this gut feeling that we belonged here. She describes it as the same gut feeling she got when we met. And after viewing 13 houses before this one, I agreed — this home was special and there was so much opportunity to put our stamp on it,” Emma explains.
“I try to embody a sense of playfulness and experimentation with my style, finding so much joy in the creative process of doing whatever the F I want. It has been so much fun documenting my mural creation and home decor on my TikTok: @phillyfunhouse.”
Apartment Therapy Survey:
My Style: A mix of eclectic, maximalist, Art Deco, and retro-inspired
Inspiration: ’90s cartoons, French Victorian greenhouses, immersive art installations
Favorite Element: My favorite room is the dining room. It is a perfect representation of my style and the central gathering place in our home. Coming from an Italian family, we often eat large family dinners and spend hours at the table talking and laughing. So the dining room is, in ways, a sacred space. My dining room has such a beautiful mix of playfulness (a mushroom painted on the wall, a drippy paint cabinet come to life with eyeball knobs, a wavy mirror DIY, a mini heat map mural around the thermostat), plus heritage (heirloom cherry wood dining table from my fiancée’s mom and an antique workbench as our sideboard) plus art plus a large deep-set window with plants. It is also the only room that doesn’t have a ceiling fan — the house came with a different ceiling fan in every room and I was adamant that at least the dining room ceiling fan had to go in favor of a light fixture.
Biggest Challenge: We are definitely working with a small budget, really a non-existent budget. And I’m an incredibly impatient person with a lot of things I want to do at once. Our kitchen has been the toughest space to work within. I love to cook and when we moved in, it wasn’t at all set up to do so as it is a very small galley with hardly any storage or counter space. We don’t have the money for a kitchen reno, so we turned to DIY. We used our small budget to buy an IKEA butcher block island and then made shelves with some old barn wood and painted our cabinets. It’s transformed the space and has allowed us to actually use the kitchen.
Proudest DIY: I love all of my murals but if I have to pick the one I’m proudest of it is probably the rainbow ribbon in my second and third floor hallway. It took so much work because I wanted it to be really precise and I am in love with the way it turned out.
Budget: We pay just under $1700 per month for our mortgage. We feel so privileged to own a home. When we bought our house we moved across the country and didn’t bring any furniture with us. So we were starting from scratch. We saved about $5,000 to completely furnish and decorate our house. We’ve saved a lot of money by decorating with paint and reusing paint from one project on other projects. Paint makes such a big impact without too big of an expense.
Is there something unique about your home or the way you use it? We transformed one of the bedrooms into a dressing room for my fiancée complete with a green velvet couch. It’s really the only room in our house with closet space and my fiancée gets up super early for work so she has all of her clothes and gets dressed in her dressing room so she doesn’t wake me up.
Please describe any helpful, inspiring, brilliant, or just plain useful small space maximizing and/or organizing tips you have: I’ve taken to displaying otherwise mundane items as decor. For example, I put all of my unrefrigerated produce in bowls on my side board and I love the way it looks. On a similar line of thinking, I utilize open shelving in my space and display items I like and free up more closed storage for things that are a bit uglier.
Finally, what’s your absolute best home secret or decorating advice? If you’re unsure about a design or a style, just try it out! Experimenting with colors and shapes has allowed me to make mistakes that have aided to a final product that I love. Also, decorating is a marathon not a sprint. Be on the lookout for thrifted pieces you love and let your style evolve as you evolve.
Shopping local and secondhand: I love to scour local shops such as Philly Aids Thrift and Philly Vintage Bazaar for vintage home goods and treasured thrift finds. My favorite thrift find to date has been the mid century mod lamp that sits next to my cow chair (found at Philly Aids Thrift!) – it is such a treasure. All art in my home has been gifted to me or sourced from small, independent artists that I’ve found through local flea markets or seen through the power of the internet.
An inspiring workplace can support well-being and productivity, so it’s always worth investing some time and energy into its function and look. That’s exactly why New Orleans-based interior designer Nomita Joshi-Gupta, who is also the owner of multi-line wallpaper and fabric showroom, Spruce, was tapped by a local financial company to breathe new life into a second-story space in a historic warehouse.
The office, originally part of a mercantile from the mid-1800s, centered on a main meeting area with smaller rooms radiating off it. That patchwork of spaces, combined with the low ceilings at different heights that created darkness in the space, made for an interesting challenge, as Joshi-Gupta was tasked not only with creating a welcoming area for clients but also designated spaces for meetings, storage, and desks that would all feel connected stylistically. “They wanted the office to have a residential and cozy feel,” says Joshi-Gupta of her client’s goals. “They wanted a space that was modern yet approachable.”
So she started where any designer would — with a point of reference and inspiration. For this office, two things came to mind. “I was immediately inspired by the historic character of the building and the daylight from the skylights that reminded me of ‘60s modernist architecture with enclosed light wells and gardens,” says Joshi-Gupta. The second was a little more unexpected. “I was thinking of lushness but how was I going to create lushness in a dark space?” says Joshi-Gupta. “For years, I had been obsessing over Lenny Kravitz’s home in Brazil and how he has created an organic modern space connecting indoors and outdoors with materials and large-scale murals. I used this as my guiding inspiration.”
The final plan? Bring in muralist (and Small/Cool alumna!) Liz Kamarul to design a similar black banana leaf mural to expand the main space visually, with palms creeping onto each of the walls leading to the distinct zones throughout the office. The choppy layout would get divided a bit further — but this time those demarcations would be purposeful and visually-cohesive, united by the recurring use of certain materials and bold color. “An entry was created by building a L-shaped screen wall,” says Joshi-Gupta. “It immediately helped divide the public areas from the private executive offices.” Another of the awkward rooms got divided to create an office room and storage. “I designed sliding doors based on Japanese Shoji doors to allow light into the space and echoed the same design on the storage wall side,” says Joshi-Gupta.
Working with local millworkers and upholsterers, Joshi-Gupta honed in on modern, handmade, and textured furniture. “We re-upholstered a sofa in a vibrant velvet and created seating pods,” she says. “We imported authentic reproductions of Jeanneret chairs from India (Phantom Hands) for the dining area.” She and her team also shopped for vintage modern accessories from a local consigner to furnish the spaces.
Six months later, the company now has a clean-lined — but still warm and welcoming — feel with residential touches that’s inspiring to all that walk through the door, employee or client. “I love how the office looks modern and inviting and offers many places for clients to visit, and staff to work and eat,” says Joshi-Gupta of the project. For her and her client, this project was truly set off by Kamarul’s palm mural, but she offers this advice if a mural’s not in the cards for your own office project: “If you are not up to or do not have the budget for commissioning a mural, try a dramatic wallpaper on a wall.”
This piece is part of Transformation Month, where we’re showing off amazing home makeovers, brilliant tiny tweaks, inspiring before & afters, and so much more. Head on over here to see it all!
