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This Circa-1883 Home Had Many Former Lives Before It Became the Coolest House on the Block

Chartres 1883, in Bywater, New Orleans, didn’t start out as a home—it started out as everything else. A hay and feed store. A grocery. A café. A soft drink shop. So when a fifth-generation local millworker and his wife spotted the property in 2022, they didn’t see a fixer-upper—they saw a charming piece of history begging for a second act. The couple fell hard—so much so that they bought the building without plans of ever living in it themselves.


Turns out, luck was on their side. The structu...
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This 1954 Cottage Is Swedish Seaside Living at Its Finest

Ask anyone who knows Ika Ramel and Sanna Nathanson, and they’ll swear that the Stockholm-based designers are 1950s souls living in millennial bodies. “We just love anything old,” says Ramel—and by anything, she mostly means homes. So when a father and his three children invited the Studio Ramson founders to reimagine their single-story midcentury house along Sweden’s southwestern coast, it felt less like a commission and more like fate.
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Behind the Design of Two Siblings' Side-by-Side Cedar Cabins in Japan

Never in a million years did Koji Inafuku think he’d build one home—let alone two—on his late grandfather’s farm in the Japanese city of Nanjo. “It was never part of the plan,” says Inafuku. “But when my father inherited the land, he suggested that my sister and I build houses there.” So, back in 2010, they did—but not before tapping a talented architect friend, Hiroyuki Yamaguchi, and showing him a photo of a warm and minimal wooden cabin by Yoshifumi Nakamura. “I told him, ‘I want to build som...
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This Scuba-Loving Couple’s Florida Home Makes a Case for Kelp Green

For one scuba-loving couple, trading city life in Washington, D.C., for the laid-back rhythm of High Springs, Florida—a town famed for its turquoise springs and storybook charm—was a chance to keep the water close, and its magic even closer. To them, a home inspired by those crystal pools felt like the perfect place to begin. The only snag? They had no idea how to bring it to life. What they did have, though, was the perfect blank slate: a forgotten workshop separated from the main house by a ha...
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Behind the Design of an L.A. Bungalow Where the Outdoor Shower Rivals the Indoor One

We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Interior designer Jessica Nicastro likes to make things happen. While that usually means crafting beautiful spaces, sometimes she sets other things in motion. “Like labor,” quips the Los Angeles-based creative and founder of Jessica Nicastro Design—referring, of course, to the kind that involves babies, not buildings. When she first met clients Katie and Rob to discuss their midcentury bungalow in...
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At This Off-Grid Mexico Retreat, Giant Boulders Are Stepping Stones Between Rooms

Most Sardinians would argue that you can take the person out of Sardinia, but you can’t take Sardinia out of the person. Jasmine Scalesciani-Hawken is living proof. The half-Italian, half-Argentine interior designer and wellness coach grew up spending part of her summers in the wild hinterlands of Sardinia, Italy, in a house designed by the architect Alberto Ponis, who famously weaved the rocky landscape into his buildings. Mix in trips to Punta Del Este, Uruguay, and Buenos Aires, and it should...
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We Thought We’d Seen It All With Hidden Kitchen Storage, Then We Spotted This Sneaky Backsplash

Denver-based interior designer Kate Bendewald has a thing for hidden storage. So when she came across a photo of a secret spice cabinet somewhere on the Internet, the idea was burned into her memory. “Once I see something, it gets embedded in my cerebral hard drive,” says Bendewald, whose total recall came in handy during the recent redesign of an 1880s bungalow kitchen. Her clients, Tracy Talbot and Meghan King, loved the idea as much as she did. “All we had to do was figure out how to build th
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A "Nothing Too Shiny or New" Mantra Led These Designers to a Turmeric-Hued Kitchen

Most people who remodel want to bring their home into the present, not take it back to the past. But creative couple Jolene Ellis and Chris Graves aren’t your average renovators. When the cofounders and principals of London-based interior design studio Clarence & Graves bought a pair of adjacent apartments in Somerset, England, the first thing they did was turn back the clock. The kitchen was clearly stuck in the 1980s (the walls had spots, there was no sink, and the ceiling was too low for comf
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This Arkansas Cabin Rental Was So Groovy, a Guest Bought It for Himself

When interior designer Whitney Romanoff, her husband, Stephen, and their 2-year-old daughter, Sofia, moved from California to Arkansas in late 2020, they never mentally checked out of the Golden State. So when they chanced upon a circa-1972 cottage in Beaver Lake, nestled in a cliffside grove, they were immediately charmed by its Laurel Canyon–like vibe. “We were looking for a little holiday oasis where we could do things at our own pace,” says Romanoff, the founder and principal of Meet West St
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Laying Out a Studio Is Like Tetris, But This Rug Trick Makes It Easy

When Lisa Viergutz moved to Michigan during the height of the lockdown, she hadn’t planned on returning to New York City. But, of course, life had other plans. “After many months away, I just had this feeling it was time to get back,” recounts Viergutz, a primary therapist. Discovering a 30th-floor studio on the Upper West Side in a co-op building adjacent to Lincoln Center and overlooking the Hudson River felt like a sign from the universe. “The view was a game changer and helped make the decis
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This Designer Scored His Dream Log Cabin, Even After Offering $100K Under Asking

Interior designer Michael Ellison didn’t always plan on quitting New York City. “But I was reaching an age where I wanted to get married and become an adult. I began looking for homes in Tivoli and Hudson, and they were either out of my budget or didn’t justify the cost and effort,” says Ellison, the founder and principal of his eponymous New York–based studio. His fate changed one January morning in 2020 when he stumbled upon a listing for a knotty pinewood log cabin in Sullivan County, roughly
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She’s Into Cozy, He’s More Modern—Here’s How Their Designer Found a Colorful Middle Ground

The first thing Karee Jones told Annie Downing was that she didn’t want a white house. “And she was like, ‘Oh, good, because I don’t do white houses,’” recalls Karee with a laugh.

When Karee and her husband, Loren, a urologist, and their two kids, 11-year-old Millie and 9-year-old Otis, moved into a new home in Austin’s Allandale neighborhood last year, the first thing she did was look up interior designers. Of the seven she interviewed, she clicked only with Downing. To Karee, she felt like a
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Quebec: This Designer's Jewel-Box Weekend Retreat Was Once a Farmhouse No One Wanted

Montreal-based interior designer Luke Havekes is all about the cozy life. So when he set his heart on building a weekend home in the country town of Knowlton, in Canada’s Eastern Townships, there was only one catch—he would need a suitably snug Friday-to-Sunday getaway in the interim. An 1841 farmhouse in nearby West Bolton set on one-and-a-half acres of land checked all his boxes for a temporary nest. And luckily, no other buyers had seen its potential. “It sat on the housing market through the
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This Couple Had a Hangover, Then an Epiphany: They'd Embrace a Brownstone's Dark Side

One morning in January 2021, new parents Will and Lauren woke up in their Brooklyn apartment with the sort of hangover that could only be possible from too much late-night champagne and tending to a 1-month-old baby. For the pair (she’s a product director at exercise equipment and media company Peloton; he’s a food and events entrepreneur), the nocturnal escapade led to a curious (and unrelated) epiphany: While many of their friends had retreated to the suburbs during COVID, they shared a sudden
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This Brooklyn Home Is 1840s on the Outside, But Is Giving 2040s on the Inside

At the end of a quiet, leafy alley in New York’s historic Brooklyn Heights is a home that has lived many lives. Originally built in the 1840s, the structure was first used as a stable, then subsequently as a garage, before it was extensively renovated and expanded into a home in the late 1990s. And while the architect who took the project on more than 30 years ago received local historic preservation accolades for its facade design, the couple who bought the place in 2016—an author and a filmmak
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A Mirrored Bar and Groovy Woven Built-Ins Helped This Laurel Canyon Home Find Its Cozy-Cool Harmony

When Caroline Edwards and Nicholas Kraft first stepped inside the Laurel Canyon home that would soon become their newlywed nest, they knew right away that it was the ideal place to begin their next chapter. What they didn’t anticipate is that they’d remodel the entire house. Their vision was initially limited to adding a tub to the primary bathroom, but their designer Gianpiero Gaglione’s enthusiasm combined with the couple’s love of a big project sparked a major overhaul. The cherry on top was