A new wave of outside-the-box interior design is reshaping the homes of NYC’s restless renters, as they attempt to stay sane through yet another COVID-19 winter.
Nadia Charif, 30, a health and wellness advisor at Coffeeble who lives with her partner, a creative freelancer, and her Cavapoo in a 600-square-foot apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn, made a meditation fort to escape the noise of her small living quarters.
The meditation fort is made out of white sheets, bamboo blinds (made from a removed window shade) and three tension rods, all of which they got at Target for less than $50.
It has a “calming sunset lamp that casts the perfect ambient glow after sunset,” she said.
She uses it for “peace of mind away from my messy partner and growing love for meditating and yoga since the pandemic.”
Psychotherapist and editor-in-chief of Verywell Mind Amy Morin said, “Your environment makes a big difference to your mental health. Living in a small space can take a toll on your mental health if you’re not careful.” She added, “But putting in a little extra effort to create an environment that helps you think, feel, and do your best is time well spent. You might have to get a little creative to make it work for you, but creating an enjoyable space to live in can improve your well-being.”
When Chelsea Leigh Trescott, the 34-year-old breakup coach, podcaster and writer found her plans to go clubbing cramped by Omicron, she brought the club to her East Village apartment, where she lives and works with her 13-year-old cat Sig and 11-year-old dog, Zarz.
She transformed her 500-square-foot basement apartment into “Club Chelsea” by lining the baseboards and staircase with RGB LED strip lights that change speed and colors to the music, galaxy and star projectors that double as Bluetooth music speakers and sunset spotlight projectors.
To pull off the gallery feel, she scoured shops online and traveled all around New York and New Jersey in search of “some epic pieces,” including a 3D-mirrored sculpture of the 1980s New York City skyline made from “high-energy cobalt blue,” a sculpture by Soho street artist “Alex the Fab” aptly named “La Maison de la Lumière” (“The House of Light”), two framed Patrick Nagel prints from a guy on Letgo, a marketplace app; and a “moody portrait” of Twiggy — all of which cost between $70 and $300 per piece.
“Living in a small space can take a toll on your mental health if you’re not careful.”
Psychotherapist Amy Morin of Verywell Mind
“I decided to view the pandemic as a dare to my soul,” she said. “Rather than being fearful, how can I have fun in the midst of fear? How can I be the light?”
But for 29-year-old Thomas Jepsen, the CEO of the architecture company Passion Plans who lives and works in a 400-square-foot apartment in Tribeca, a club-like atmosphere is precisely what he is hoping to get away from.
To block out the noise from neighbors, he covered all of the walls of the apartment with egg cartons stuffed with fabric — which is, believe it or not, a popular internet “hack” for soundproofing.
Jepsen also put up dividers purchased from Amazon in each room and eventually ended up creating a more permanent solution with polyester room-dividing screen partitions. When Jepsen and his girlfriend, an engineer who lives with him, want to work, they simply roll the curtains across the apartment. When they want to use their apartment again, they roll them back to the side.
“Our apartment’s style has always been a minimalist Nordic design,” he said. “The noise-reducing solution is anything but Nordic design but was used to ensure my sanity.”
Meanwhile, when Taran Conwell, a Chicago-based 36-year-old podcaster and stay-at-home mom needed some respite from her three small children — ages 1, 4 and 6 — and her husband, a senior IT engineer, so she created a “cloffice,” or an office and lounge in a tiny closet in her house.
Conwell donated 90% of what was formerly a space overflowing with abandoned craft projects and supplies, acting as a general dumping ground for tchotchkes. She then added a small table to serve as a desk, with a pink swivel chair, shelves on the upper walls, a bulletin board and a plush throw rug, fleece beanbag chair with pillows and blankets and a hanging plant on the other side.
“My cloffice saved me from this pandemic,” Conwell said. “It’s where I retreat when I’m overwhelmed by motherhood, where I create and have my best ideas and where I spent over a year healing through meditation and journaling.”
A word from our experts
Sharon Falcher and Sherica Maynard of Interior Design By S&S says Conwell is on trend with her cloffice.
“Closets are the new sacred spare rooms during the pandemic,” she said.
She recommends moving coats to a “stylish rack” and installing shelves in your closet, which can store books or other belongings and help create an atmosphere for an office meditation space.
“The beauty about this one is that it’s a designated area and the door can be shut so work does not feel so involved in personal space,” Falcher said.
“Small apartments can be like playing ‘Tetris’ on an average day but even more tricky with COVID, mostly because you have to create separation between work life from home and personal life and a little privacy between the couples or families that live there as well.”
Sharon Falcher of Interior Design By S&S
Foldable partitions or curtains can help create separate spaces where doors don’t exist, according to Falcher. A bed net with a hanging chair in a spare corner can add ambiance and peace as well.
“Small apartments can be like playing ‘Tetris’ on an average day but even more tricky with COVID, mostly because you have to create separation between work life from home and personal life and a little privacy between the couples or families that live there as well,” she said.
Rebecca Gitana Torres, a Long Island City-based interior designer, transformation guide and creator of the television special, “Healing Through the Home,” suggests playing with spaces and letting go of conventional assumptions about what purpose a particular room should serve or where furniture should go.
“When we are creative and don’t follow traditional floor plans, we can actually find tons of space just waiting to be lived in,” she said.
Torres, for instance, turned her living room into her bedroom during the pandemic, which enabled her to create a “hotel suite” vibe and a working studio bedroom became a working studio where she could “go to work.”
“This created a more serene home where I could separate my worlds,” she said.
Thinking outside of the box within your tiny box is the first step to creating more Zen to get through the pandemic winter. Hacks like turning even small rooms into divided spaces using furniture arrangements, area rugs, curtains and accent lighting can help create “zones for different activities” and create more mental space and well-being.
Indoor gardens are another way to lift moods, increase productivity and connect us with nature, according to Torres.
“As a home healer and interior designer, during lockdown my small one-bedroom apartment often felt like my very own expansive and luxurious compound,” Torres said. “It took lots of gratitude and these super-approachable transformational hacks to maintain my sanity and embrace the experience.”