Can The Interior Design Of A Loft Apartment Be Child Friendly?
A smart reno blends the hard industrial elements of a former factory space and the comfort of a family home.
A smart reno blends the hard industrial elements of a former factory space and the comfort of a family home.
IN NEW YORK designer Lucy Harris’s experience, Manhattanites tend to ask for “refined and upscale” décor, a description that suggests the sort of formal, adults-only living room children must resentfully eye from a distance. The couple who came to her for help when renovating this West Village loft, however, wanted a refined, upscale home that they and their children, ages 5 and 8, would nevertheless find familial and cozy. Said Ms. Harris, who pulled together the interior design with a colleague, senior designer Kelley Roach, “They very much wanted a grown-up space, but they did not want it to be precious.”
Traces of the space’s former life as the floor of a factory building—wrapped beams, a concrete pillar, great, gridded windows—contribute a sophisticated hipness. To keep the aesthetic spare, Ms. Harris installed a tightly edited collection of contemporary furnishings in a limited, muted palette. To a basic scheme of black, white and gray, she added earthy tones of sandy brown and blush, and the occasional jolt of saturated colour for a note of childlike playfulness and adult artiness.
Instead of the “typical synthetic outdoor fabrics” most people use to childproof residences, the designers favoured natural materials. “There’s nothing to me more homemaking than wood and wool,” not to mention durable, said Ms. Harris. To coax “the warmth and sense of safety you get from nature” into the space, she drafted a slew of swishy houseplants and furnishings that curve and slope. Here, a tour of the loft’s elegant yet approachable rooms, and guidance on how to achieve the same visual balance yourself.
When an entryway isn’t clearly delineated, as in most converted lofts, grouping elements that share one colour can make an area around the front door feel “more defined,” said Ms. Harris. Here, she chose a bluish-grey, tying together Eskayel’s Nairutya wallpaper, the console’s leather fronts and the blobby ceramics by Los Angeles artist Pilar Wily. The wallcovering’s easygoing “hippie tie-dye” pattern lightens the effect of dressier details such as the agate-baubled Talisman sconce from Apparatus and the glamorous peach mirror. The owners wanted an “eye-catching introduction to the home,” Ms. Harris said, and a warm welcome. The shearling chair is particularly inviting—and aligns with her plan to dress the home, wherever possible, in natural fibres that age well and are somewhat stain and bacteria-resistant.
The only overtly practical elements in the living room? The built-in storage and performance-fabric upholstery of the blocky sofa. Beyond that, family-friendliness comes via the chubby, swirly and rounded furniture. “Circles just feel very comforting,” explained Ms. Harris of the cushy stools and the custom coffee table. Curvilinear shapes—also seen in the Gestalt armchairs and the Fitzhugh Karol sculpture—add a “holding,” humanlike feel to the room along with grace. “They’re almost like a hip, or an arm, or a leg,” said Ms. Harris.
An otherwise briskly modern kitchen got hits of homeyness with organic elements: blackened-elm cabinets from New York kitchen specialists Urban Homes, pale ash stool legs and a pleasing mishmash of plants, wicker and nobby dishware. Metal shelves jibe with industrial-chic vestiges of the once-commercial space, such as the structural pillar and metal pipes. Meanwhile the stools—with their Crayola-red appeal and cosseting curved backs—make primo seats for kids. The poppy chairs also connect to the couple’s psychedelic prints. That kind of chromatic synchronicity, said Ms. Harris, cuts down on visual clutter.
The dining room called for something a bit more elevated than the rest of the home, said Ms. Harris—hence the table of nero marquina marble and steel by Croft House to complement the lean black-stone fireplace. While the room, with that rigid linearity and relatively high-maintenance marble, is mostly for dinner parties, it still needed to connect with the otherwise child-friendly apartment. The set of 1960s Italian chairs, each with a low-slung, wide seat and inviting little lip of fabric that peeks over the top of the slick table, added “a soft element,” said Ms. Harris, as does the whimsical pendant light from Matter.
In the primary bedroom, Ms. Harris called on the soothingly restrained ticking pattern of Rebecca Atwood’s Dashes wallpaper to create a refuge. “It shrinks your world a little bit,” she said. Napped textiles—the cabinlike alpaca bouclé of the headboard, the velvet throw pillows and chair—add to the room’s coddling effect. The quilt, from Thompson Street Studio, might blend and disappear amid traditional décor. But in the context of a bare industrial window and the simple globe of a Noguchi lantern, the bedcover that Ms. Harris selected for its “handmade feel and earth tones” is both unexpected and inviting.
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Ray White’s chief economist outlines her predictions for housing market trends in 2024
Ray White’s chief economist, Nerida Conisbee says property price growth will continue next year and mortgage holders will need to “survive until 2025” amid expectations of higher interest rates for longer.
Ms Conisbee said strong population growth and a housing supply shortage combatted the impact of rising interest rates in 2023, leading to unusually strong price growth during a rate hiking cycle. The latest CoreLogic data shows home values have increased by more than 10 percent in the year to date in Sydney, Brisbane and Perth. Among the regional markets, price growth has been strongest in regional South Australia with 8.6 percent growth and regional Queensland at 6.9 percent growth.
“As interest rates head close to peak, it is expected that price growth will continue. At this point, housing supply remains extremely low and many people that would be new home buyers are being pushed into the established market,” Ms Conisbee said. “Big jumps in rents are pushing more first home buyers into the market and population growth is continuing to be strong.”
Ms Conisbee said interest rates will be higher for longer due to sticky inflation. “… we are unlikely to see a rate cut until late 2024 or early 2025. This means mortgage holders need to survive until 2025, paying far more on their home loans than they did two years ago.”
Buyers in coastal areas currently have a window of opportunity to take advantage of softer prices, Ms Conisbee said. “Look out for beach house bargains over summer but you need to move quick. In many beachside holiday destinations, we saw a sharp rise in properties for sale and a corresponding fall in prices. This was driven by many pandemic driven holiday home purchases coming back on to the market.”
Here are three of Ms Conisbee’s predictions for the key housing market trends of 2024.
Ms Conisbee said the types of apartments being built have changed dramatically amid more people choosing to live in apartments longer-term and Australia’s ageing population downsizing. “Demand is increasing for much larger, higher quality, more expensive developments. This has resulted in the most expensive apartments in Australia seeing price increases more than double those of an average priced apartment. This year, fewer apartments being built, growing population and a desire to live in some of Australia’s most sought-after inner urban areas will lead to a boom in luxury apartment demand.”
The rising costs of energy and the health impacts of heat are two new factors driving interest in green homes, Ms Conisbee said. “Having a greener home utilising solar and batteries makes it cheaper to run air conditioning, heaters and pool pumps. We are heading into a particularly hot summer and having homes that are difficult to cool down makes them far more dangerous for the elderly and very young.”
For some time now, long-term social changes such as delayed marriage and an ageing population have led to more people living alone. However, Ms Conisbee points out that the pandemic also showed that many people prefer to live alone for lifestyle reasons. “Shorter term, the pandemic has shown that given the chance, many people prefer to live alone with a record increase in single-person households during the time. This trend may influence housing preferences, with a potential rise in demand for smaller dwellings and properties catering to individuals rather than traditional family units.”
Consumers are going to gravitate toward applications powered by the buzzy new technology, analyst Michael Wolf predicts
Chris Dixon, a partner who led the charge, says he has a ‘very long-term horizon’