One of my favorite rooms in our new loft is finally done. Well, probably not truly done –the art and accessories will continue to evolve– but finished enough to show you. It’s our den, a dark, loungy space where we curl up to watch TV and videos (Wonderpets and Yo Gabba Gabba are in heavy rotation at the moment), read, snooze and listed to music.
Before
Construction. As we found it, the room didn’t show much promise. It was a dark, poky, windowless, featureless room separated from the main hall by a pair of glass sliding doors. The positions of doors to a walk-in closet and the fire stairs limited furniture placement, and a tangle of HVAC, electrical and plumbing works overhead prevented us from raising the dropped ceiling more than a few inches.
Our first steps were to remove the awkwardly proportioned doors, raise the ceiling as much as we could, and create new entrance that was taller to feel more elegant and narrower to allow for better furniture placement.
Decoration. We decided to embrace the room’s natural darkness rather than fight it. We designed a lighting plan to create warm pools of light in a dark space rather than flood the room with light. We also chose a palette of materials that would enhance the cozy, cave-like feeling: brown-black cork wallcovering (from Phillip Jeffries), walnut slats for the ceiling, bright blue wool for the sofa (Kvdrat from Denmark) and fabrics with deep, saturated reds and golds for the chairs (Paul Smith for Maharam) and pillows (Josef Franck). We started with the gray rug you see below, but moved it to the master bedroom in Southampton when David found a special vintage piece that we loved for this space.
After
Now the room opens to the book-lined hall with a single rolling door made of hot-rolled steel and gray frosted glass (seen closed and from the inside in the first picture above.)
The hand-tied wool rug is German or Danish from the late 60s or early 70s. It’s a little crazy, but we love the exuberantly shaggy vibe it gives the room. If you like this sort of thing, Campbells Loft in Newark, New Jersey (of all places) is a fabulous playground of 60s and 70s rugs, fabrics, furniture, art and objects that you shouldn’t miss, either online or in person. (Three year-old Julia loved it so much that, when it was time to go, she volunteered to stay by herself if we would come back to get her before dinnertime –we declined.)
The blue sectional is nice for a movie, a snuggle or a nap.
The slatted walnut ceiling adds warmth and texture, I think.
And I love the way it floats away from the walls.
To reduce visual clutter, we finished the closet door to make it disappear. (We use the closet for storing wine and party supplies.)
Another advantage of the dark cork walls is that the five in-wall speakers virtually disappear, and you’re not really aware of the wall-mounted television until (feet up, wine opened) you turn it on.
Ahhhhh.
