3 Interior Designers Transform The Same Loft Bedroom _ Architectural Digest

These three interior designers have been given a photograph of a young professional's bedroom. They have free reign to design it in any way they please. My name is Darren Jett, and my design style is cinematic, seductive, and narrative-driven. I'm Naz, and my design style is eclectic, colorful, and joyful. My name's Xavier, and my design style is narrative, layered, and artful. My first impressions of the space are that we have a lot to work with. The ceilings are incredibly high. I can see that there are actually even visible architectural beams, which makes me very happy. Pretty nice room, actually. It's big for a bedroom, but it's a little bit plain. It just needs a little bit of charm added in. This room feels kind of special in an old-world kind of way, and so I think I'm going to lean into that and really try to make it feel like this very special old-world space. My vision for the space overall is I want to take full advantage of how large this room is to create a separate sleeping area and a separate living or lounge area. What I wanted to achieve was a space that was completely calming, absolutely serene. I'm a young professional myself. Whenever I have a long, tiring day, I just want to go home and just sort of disconnect. So I actually love the hardwood floors here, and I don't want to lose them completely, but I do want there to be some cozy stuff underfoot. I would love to install a whole platform across the entire length of the room where the bed is going to go. That will get warm hardwood floor, and then down in the lounge area, we'll do carpet. It's a checkerboard that actually waves, almost like a checker flag, and that's just enough subtle weird-o-ness that it makes it not exactly repetitive. What I want to do here is actually carpet the room. I think it's perfect for a bedroom. It's very soft. It's very luxurious. I love this sort of green color right here. So what I want to do is create a raised platform made out of the same carpet in the middle of the room as a feature. So the floors in this room are actually pretty nice, but I want to make a space that feels really soft, really luxurious. So I'm going to replace it with carpeting. I'm going to do this really beautiful, plush, creamy, off-white carpeting, which is from Nordic Knots. No shoes, please. I'm going to layer on a nice vintage Afghan rug, which brings in a little bit more pattern but doesn't overwhelm the space. Right now, the walls are just a plain painted white. That is not going to get us the effect of this serene environment. We're going to paint the room a little bit of a moodier color. But instead of just doing regular paint, I want to do a Roman clay, and it just gives an overall aged effect that I think is very satisfying when you are decompressing after a long day. Additionally, the wall on the left is slanted. I think that's a very cool feature. And what I want to do is to make sense of why it stops at sort of waist height and create a datum line that wraps the entire room. I would love to have this wainscoting down here be actually a high polished metal, maybe more of like a mirror polish, something just to give some reflection and some interest to this room. For the walls, I want to make something really beautiful that feels a little transportive. It feels to me like we're up at the top of a building, like that window is looking out onto some vista. I'm thinking of doing a beautiful mural in here that basically depicts in a very illustrative, painterly way the treetops of some surrounding parkland. Now, the walls. This is the largest surface in the room. I want to do a graph paper grid and I'm going to do it all over. I'm going to put it in the dormer window. What I want to start to do is think about the closet. That's incredibly important for a bedroom. We have this alcove over here that I would love to take advantage of. And I think the best thing here would be to do some sort of closet system from Ikea. I actually have this closet in my own apartment right now. And the beauty is that over time, if you have more hanging or more drawers, you can easily just pop them off and add something else in its place. This room doesn't have any storage, so we really need to add that in. On the wall on the right side, I'm going to use that nook to create a built-in wardrobe system. And then I'm going to continue the wood paneling across that wall so that it feels a little bit more like an entire millwork piece. It kind of ties it all together architecturally. And then around the perimeter of the room, I'm going to do a built-in bookshelf. So there's going to be two shelves of bookshelves and a row of drawers on top. Storage is a big, big part of my focus here. And in the recess, I'm going to put closets. Actually, Ikea has great units that come in lots of different widths. So you can sort of tailor to the best size, how wide or how many units. And then any space left over, I want to do little shelves. And my plan for the bed is also to orient it this way. So your head is here and your feet are over here. And that does mean, of course, that there's the issue of, am I going to sit up from a nightmare and bonk my head on the ceiling? So the way that I'm planning on resolving that is actually pushing the bed into the loft a little bit more and then filling that whole space in with a big, squishy headboard. I love foam headboards. And now that I have the bed up on a raised platform, well, I certainly don't want anyone to roll off and flop into the sofa. So we should have some kind of a barrier here. I actually think that a very open wood trellis would be incredible. In front of the window, I thought it'd be really nice to do a little built-in day bed. And then one of my favorite pieces, which is the Eileen Gray side table. For the bed, I found this lovely upholstered bed from Ikea. It's really soft, kind of neutral. I think it fits into this space really perfectly because I've got that wood behind it. And I wanted something a little bit lighter in color and softer to go in front of that. Love these two little very utilitarian USM hauler bedside tables. They're chrome and enameled metal. So at the end of the bed, I put this classic campaign style bench. These were used in military campaigns in the 18th, 19th century. They always have a nice patina. Down in the loft area, I want to continue the built-in energy that we have in the closet. So that same lovely wood finish from the closet doors, I'm going to have also on the stairs. And because the stairs are already custom built, I love the idea of drafting off of that with a big built-in media console that has drawers in it. And then that's a perfect place for you to have your TV on this wall right here. Over by the window, I would love to do a desk. Whenever we have a room with a slanted window, you can't walk under the space. So it's the perfect place to have something like a desk with a space this big. Let each element be large and unapologetic. It could be the entire length of that wall. So now that I know where my TV is going, the perfect and most logical place for seating to go is across from it. I found these wild sofas from Ikea that actually start as almost like short little sofas and then pull out and extend into a really unusual shape that you can actually use as like an extra bed. There's even an option to have storage inside of the sofa. So for the coffee table, there's an artist named Kelsey Rudolph whose work I absolutely adore. And she made these two side tables that have a very interesting, almost Minecraft sort of geometry about it. And this is where I'm going to go vintage. Vintage was a really cool way for me to find collectible, unique pieces that I wasn't going to see in all of my friends' apartments. So this is a beautiful Dutch mid-century little wooden table. I'm going to use these two lovely like Ikea display cabinets, which are very simple, almost utilitarian glass cabinet, but I also think these display cases are really nice because it feels a little more contemporary, a little newer, a little cleaner. And then against that wood, which feels a little bit more antique, a little bit more, you know, vintage. And then a Corbusier chair on the right side, which kind of frames out the rest of this room. So the focal point of the bedroom will be the bed, and we're going to have it on the raised plinth. We could do some really cool side tables from Ikea. I wanted to design a headboard that had multi-function. Around the bed area, it acts as a headboard. On the other side, though, by the closet, it also acts as a screening area. It really takes the idea of this larger bedroom, but it starts to subdivide the spaces in a very intelligent way. I've recently been into chandeliers that you can kind of drape all over the place. So there's actually a beautiful collaboration of lighting that is a combination of woven rope and beautiful hand-blown glass from Brightbound with artist Wendy Chen. It's time for the lighting, and I want the idea of indirect lighting to be paramount. The first thing we're going to do is within that wainscoting, what I want to do is to have an LED embedded within that that goes across the space. It would be on its own dimming switch. It could also be one of these LEDs that actually can change color temperatures and colors even if you want for a completely different look. For a bedroom lighting scheme, I like to keep the lighting mostly kind of on the lower side at eye level, something really kind of moody and atmospheric. I used matching set of sconces and floor lamps, both in a polished nickel finish with a really nice green glass lampshade, which I actually found on a nautical supply store. But I think it's a very classic thing, and I think it brings in the perfect little pop of color to this room. For the overhead lighting, I love this IKEA piece that actually sort of looks like I took a silk scarf and then pinched it up from the middle. So I like that it has a very sort of organic flowing shape and looks very sort of milky and soft when it's turned on. I love the idea of there also being like little table lamps in the lounge area and in the bed area. I actually found these from IKEA, and I think they're so cute. They're these perfect battery-operated little units. I think they are so sweet. I love also that the shade tips by the closet. We're definitely going to want to have a light right by that area. And there's the IKEA light right here off to the right. I think every desk needs a lamp. And this lamp is actually more of an art piece by this company called Casa Alfrera, based in Santo Domingo in the DR. Additionally, I want to have two floor lamps that flank the bed. They would be tucked right behind the side tables. They're these IKEA lamps that are actually sort of 1970s inspired. So now let's decorate. As for bedding, I love the idea of continuing to repeat this gridded situation. So I'm choosing this gingham linen bedding from Piglet in Bed. And then for pillows, the little blue pillow is just like a chic, fun, cozy. And then the other two pillows are actually by C.H. Herrero, these incredible interior designers who I admire so much. And this wild, spiky pillow, I love her. It is vintage Japanese kimono material. I love the idea of doing a beautiful vase, quite simple, but still has some playful elements, such as the Sophie Lou Jacobson vase that's on the bedside table. Place some poppies in there, add a little bit of color. And I love the idea of a sort of bonsai tree. I think that's very cool. Something that has been trained and formed, but still retains its natural element. To sort of finish the space off with some decoration, we have some nice antiquities, some statues, some busts here and there, some other textures. And then I've hung a painting of a tennis court by a friend of mine, Andy Dinkin. And I think that that also brings in this beautiful kind of green, mysterious energy to the space. I've always loved this wild planter. It's like inspired by ancient aqueducts in Rome, I think, by Virginia Synn. Hothos are so easy to grow. And because you've only got this one window, why don't we put like Hothos vines over here? And then I'm just gonna like sneak a couple of pieces of beautiful vintage ceramics over here on the media console. A little blue horse is always welcome. This one in particular is a vintage mid-century Italian piece from Betosi. As young professionals should be doing, get involved in the art scene. If you love design and you love decorating your home, it's such a natural thing to just go to local art galleries, local art fairs, anywhere that someone is displaying art. Other young artists are also starting their careers, which means that you can buy art at most prices. So these pieces that I have in mind are by an artist named Maya Fuji. I adore what she does. And one of the things that's wild is that how she depicts shiny hair in her girls in her artwork almost feels like a wavy checkerboard. What would a project that I do be without drapes? It's quite actually difficult to do drapery on a slanted wall. But my favorite thing to do is to have a very simple rod at the top and have a little rod at the bottom and then just let a beautiful linen drape hang very, very softly, very elegantly. I think because we have a dormer window, that window treatment inside of that dormer window could actually be blinds or something that comes down and blacks out the room if you want. But this right here would be something that would be more linen, more transparent. What I want to do is to also take that same drapery and hang it above the bed. I love the idea of heightening your sense of drama and your sense of space. I think if I were a young professional in this bedroom, I would feel inspired. I feel like this is a room that would feel really relaxing and restful to me. It's a place that I'd want to spend time reading in and that would be really functional for me. I'm really excited by the final result here. I think that it achieves all of the things that I was trying to do from the beginning, which is to essentially create a retreat for this young professional, someone who is working a lot, who needs to recharge their batteries, who needs to have a space that is a bit still and a bit more quiet. My final thoughts on this space are I love it. I did put a little bit of baby early twenties me into this, well, aspirational me. I wanted this to be a space that would feel like such a great restorative and generative place for a young person to be. It feels like something that perhaps a younger version of someone like me would look at and be like, oh, great, this is home. Wow. Okay. Oh my God. Did we all carpet? I think so. Yeah, we did. Oh my God. Seems like it. Xavier, I really love these murals. I mean, I kind of assumed based on the shape of the room, it was an attic space or the top of a building, but it only had that one little window. So I thought, let me bring in the outside world a little bit. Yeah. I love it. Now I need to know how to do this. Oh, yes. Well, so I love tape. It is a friend. I mean, it is. And so if you have, you can rent a laser that lets you shoot the beams all over the room. You trace those over with tape and then you can just paint a mural or a wallpaper finish onto your walls. My God, fabulous. And I really actually like the grid structure completely also transforms the geometry of this space, I think. Yeah. Thank you. Wait, the bed is incredible. I love that it's floating. I just really thought the room was huge. Yes. And I thought, you know, it'd be really cool to have a bed that was central to the room. So raising that up on a platform, like a rounded platform, maybe. I think that your bedroom is inhabited by actress of the stage. Oh, I love that. No, I agree. Especially, I see the vanity right at the windows. You get perfect natural light right on your face while you're doing your dress. There's like a dressing room behind that bed, I know. Yes. There is. You're raised up on a platform, you know. Totally.