3 Interior Designers Transform The Same College Apartment

[Narrator] These three interior designers

have been given a photograph of an empty college apartment.

And they have been challenged

to create a renter-friendly design.

My name is Xavier, and my design style is cinematic,

transporting, and human.

I'm Darren Jett, and my design style is seductive,

cinematic, and narrative-driven.

My name is Noz Nozawa,

and my design style is joyful, colorful, and storytelling.

[Narrator] What will they do with all this blank space?

Presented in partnership with IKEA.

My first impressions of this space is that

it's pretty much a basic standard fare college apartment.

The floor plan, it's kind of a run on sentence.

The flow is just choppy and weird,

and I want to really combine it and make it make sense.

This is so much nicer than the apartments

that I had access to when I was in college.

It's bare bones, but there's so much potential here.

This is a college apartment,

and it really looks like one.

It's a little bit tragic, but it's sort of what you get.

[upbeat music] [pencil scribbling]

My overall vision for this apartment is I'm gonna make it

into a place that is really set up for learning

and creative exploration,

and also that it still works for entertaining.

The social aspect of being in college

is still really important.

I really wanna create a space

that feels like a salon environment for college students.

People are coming together in a welcoming space.

This could involve vintage pieces, antiques.

So my overall vision here is I wanna play with color.

Please enjoy every color equally.

The rest of the vision relies on resourcefulness.

I have this total vision of celebrating student creativity.

There are so many incredible designers.

[upbeat music] [pencil scribbling]

I really like hardwood floors for this,

especially because you don't know who's coming in

with shoes on.

So we're gonna leave the hardwood alone,

maybe just put a rug, a vintage Moroccan shag rug.

And then in the kitchen,

I actively don't like this rectangular subway tile.

I love the idea of doing peel and stick.

So this peel and stick material is from Otto Studio,

and it's literally rated for the floor.

You're supposed to use it on tile.

So where we delineate the kitchen,

I'm gonna cover all of the floors with this peel and stick,

and it's such a cute pattern.

And what I also love about it is peel and stick

is not just for easy on application,

it also is designed to be easily removable.

I think my main problem with it is that

it is split up half and half here.

I think that if we unify these two spaces

with one sort of floor material

and make it all feel like one big space,

that it gives me a little bit more flexibility

where I put certain pieces of furniture

and how I arrange this room.

I'm gonna use a Sisal carpet tile.

And the great thing about carpet tile is

you just lay it down and then you can take it back up again

when it's time to move out.

My first thought is how can we create

this kind of like natural flow?

And I think the perfect beginning to that

is always with the flooring.

Right now we sort of have these two spaces

that create this kind of L shape.

What I really want to do is create three zones.

I wanna have a living area here,

I wanna have a dining area here.

And then of course the kitchen would be here.

In the living area,

I would love to just have a big red rug.

And then in the dining area,

I want to have a big Persian rug that really takes up

all of this kind of basic boring tile.

[upbeat music] [pencil scribbling]

So right now the walls are this kind of off-white, eggshell,

basic, boring apartment paint that everyone gets.

We can do better than that.

What I'd love to do is to create a space that feels aged.

I want to tea stain the walls,

and you take literally tea bags and paper towels,

and you start sponging.

It's basically faux painting on the wall.

So for the walls in the living area,

I'm gonna use this large format corkboard tile,

which is really easy to put up.

You can just use some double stick tape

or pin it into the walls

and I'm gonna cover all those surfaces of those walls.

Besides providing a really beautiful

kind of surface texture,

it also is gonna allow people

who are living in this house to pin up

all their studies or inspiration.

And it can be really flexible and ever-changing.

It's very warm and neutral,

and I think it pairs really nicely

with the sort of like warm and neutral Sisal carpet tiles

that I'm putting down on the floor.

One of my favorite lavenders presently

is African Violet from Benjamin Moore.

It's got this like very sophisticated

dusty gray undertone to it.

It looks beautiful with the floor tile.

You can actually make this into a lime wash.

This is my personal favorite example

of what that kind of material can look like.

It's one of those things that creates so much dimension.

Now that we have the tea standing on the wall,

what I'd really love to do is to actually start

to highlight the separation

between the living area and the dining room.

Right on this header here, why not do some stenciling?

Why not create this kind of cool like threshold

that goes from one area to the next?

I'd love to do something like a Vitruvian scroll

that feels fresh, but also is referencing the past.

One of the main things that I can't change

about this kitchen is this fridge.

There's nowhere else to put it,

so I kind of wanna tie the rest

of the kitchen together to that.

So I'm gonna use these peel and stick stainless steel tiles

in a combination of just kind of flat stainless steel,

but also stainless steel peg board.

Apply those to the wall,

and that's gonna tie the rest of the kitchen together

with this one big appliance in the center.

It's all super easy to install and uninstall.

The last thing I'm gonna do

is further kind of delineate the different spaces.

So I'm gonna use just the quick track application

on the ceiling and hang some off-white curtains

that can actually pull closed

to separate the kitchen off from the living areas

when it's not being used.

It's all about building layers in this room.

I'd love to have really more separation between the fridge

and the dining area for sure.

And an easy simple division to have is curtains.

You can have curtains that are $10 a yard white cotton,

so easy to find anywhere,

and I just want to swag them along this wall,

creating a kind of Romanesque dramatic effect.

[upbeat music] [pencil scribbling]

The kitchen cabinets themselves are in pretty good shape.

I don't think right now that the wood is great.

I suspect that it's this really ugly cheap veneer wood

that you see in a lot of rental apartments,

and I don't think that's worth preserving at all.

So I'm gonna paint it in this grayish cool off-white

that can kind of match the tone of the stainless steel

and sort of tie this kitchen all together.

I am going to be painting these cabinets.

It's totally doable.

And I'm also gonna add hardware.

You will notice in the existing cabinetry it's very '80s,

it's sort of a partial overlay,

like you would just kind of get your fingies

and open the doors and drawers.

I wanna add hardware.

I think that's a great way

to just add a little sparkle moment.

And for a lot of apartments that already have hardware,

swapping those units out is really doable

and easy to put back together with no cost and no damage.

The hardware that I am showing on these cabinets

are these beautiful round spheres in brass,

and then the same spheres with a rod in between

for the drawer pulls by Lo & Co.

I love Lo & Co hardware.

I'm also going to change the kitchen faucet.

Look at the one that is in the before.

I don't love that, we're gonna change that out.

It's very easy to do.

You can basically get under the sink cabinet

or ask for help, but it's a total DIY upgrade,

and I'm gonna replace it

with this beautiful brass unit from Brizo.

So I'd like to really just start by painting the cabinets.

Our landlord said we could paint them, it's totally fine.

I'd love to do a color that's a bit more of greenish yellow.

Something like this from Benjamin Moore would be perfect.

Again, more stenciling.

It actually references Jean LaVan's bathroom in Paris

in the 1920s.

I think it's a perfect combination

with the Vitruvian scroll elsewhere,

this kind of organic shape with the geometry.

Besides the fact that the cabinets are not great,

there's actually no backsplash.

You should always have a backsplash.

It is literally to protect the wall from getting wet

and rotting because of water exposure.

So I'm just a college student, I can't do a whole lot.

Wait a minute, peel and stick. How funny is this?

I found this from this smart tile.

This is a very wild,

very dimensional faux tile

that you can stick on the wall,

just like peel and stick wallpaper,

but it's actually plasticized,

so it would actually be water-repellent.

And I think this sort of soft pinky color is so cute

with the color of the lavender cabinets

that it will be surrounded by.

[upbeat music] [pencil scribbling]

All right, let's talk furniture.

When I'm designing for a place where the communal

like living dining kitchen areas are being used

by multiple people,

there are so many things that can come about

that are challenges.

For me, the way to address that is

to create a furniture plan that is pretty versatile,

where a sofa could also count

as a workspace or a laptop space

or a napping space for your friends

who are staying over unexpectedly.

This area back here with the two doors

has kind of a strange flow,

and I need to make sure that there is pretty easy path

of travel between those two rooms.

So I'm actually gonna sort of flip the expectation

and put the dining area back in this space

and then bring the living area up front here,

which in my experience, being close to the kitchen was

where everybody hung out anyway, so I think that's fine.

So for the dining table,

I'm gonna do something that I did in college,

which is basically just get two sawhorses from Home Depot

and a tabletop, and voila, there's a dining table.

I'm also gonna use these kind of very flexible IKEA benches,

which are great because you can squeeze

more people into them than you can a regular chair.

And I'm gonna add floating bookshelves

along this back wall here,

which felt kind of unusable to me as a place

for furniture because of the way the door is positioned.

But now it's a great full wall storage solution.

We're going to have bookcases

on this empty wall right here.

This is perfect for this intellectual atmosphere

that we're trying to create.

The bookcases, they're glass-fronted,

so you see the books inside, but they don't collect dust.

I really wanna create some depth in the living room.

I want to sort of show what's going on behind this door,

but it's a really unnecessary door in my opinion.

So let's take it off the hinges.

We can put it somewhere, it can go underneath the sofa,

it can go in a closet somewhere,

and whenever you leave, you can put it back on easy peasy.

I've done it way too many times to count.

I the back of the room,

I want to start with a salon type of seating arrangement

because we're not really building the room

around a TV.

Really this is a room for studying, a room to hang out,

a room to be together with other people.

The look and feel of the sofas is vintage, it's thrifted.

These particular ones are Napoleon III style

with fringe and a beautiful pattern along the back.

But they could really be substituted for anything

that was found or given.

And then in the middle have an IKEA coffee table.

The seating area is not huge,

so it really doesn't warrant having

a big chunky coffee table.

It needs to be something that's more movable

and just more friendly for conversation and everyday life.

I have always, always loved pallet furniture.

I'm going to put the pallet sofa right at the transition

where the flooring changes between the living space

and the tile in the kitchen.

The other thing that that allows is for this main wall

to be the TV wall.

So we're gonna do a pallet sectional sofa here.

It is the most college thing

to just go find a beat up old pallet and then paint it.

We're gonna paint it with the same African violet paint.

So again, it's another part of this color drenching story.

That will be the base of my sectional sofa.

And then the cushions over top,

this is where we have fun

with being resourceful college students

who have more time than cash

and maybe a sewing machine somewhere.

There's so many different art nonprofits

throughout the country

where people just donate scraps of things

that might be useful to an art student or a designer.

So as a college student, I would go seek that out.

I would go to a used furniture type place

and just pick up old cushions that fit.

Or you could even take the foam and cut it down

and use that as the foam core

for your own cushions and reupholster them.

And so imagine you're just sort of like sifting

through the piles upon piles of old fabric remnant

and you found this, amazing.

Almost a cardamom type brown tweed from Loro Piana.

I also love this House of Hafne Jakar.

It is so cute and adorable.

And also this works.

I could imagine myself losing it as a student

if I found this Gaston y Daniela woven material.

I tried to think about how we got furniture

when I was in a college apartment,

vintage stores or Salvation Army.

So I have this kind of cool bench-like sofa

that I imagine they find

with this kind of nice striped fabric here

in kind of like a sort of a hemp weave.

Pairing that with a stainless steel coffee table,

which can kind of echo the stainless steel

that I'm using in the kitchen.

Some other antiques sprinkled in throughout the space.

This Moroccan chair upholstered in like a carpet fabric

would be a cool find.

And then as much sort of extra storage,

this green IKEA bar cart felt really flexible to me.

Something that could move around.

To fit with the sofa,

I wanna use a laptop stand rather than a coffee table.

This one is so cute.

It's bright orange from IKEA, I think it is darling,

and very functional and lightweight.

So you can just kind of move it around,

put your coffee mug on there,

put your laptop and actually do work from the sofa.

It's perfect.

And then this corner is a perfect spot

for a giant, beautiful, oversized accent chair.

Student art and student design is incredible.

Carl Derco is a Philadelphia-based designer and maker

and artist extraordinaire.

And I met him when he was a student in Philly.

So this chair, which he calls the Gnarl chair,

is this ridiculous, like bobbly, gigantic,

weirdly sturdy and amazing chair

that looks like big felted feathers are all over it.

It's such a cool experimental design.

And realistically, you too could find an amazing roommate

who has beautiful student work from class

that has nowhere to go except your future apartment

when that class is over.

So in the dining area,

what I want to do is have a round table,

really good for flow.

The space is not huge.

This table is a Biedermeier style table.

It really fits in with the vibe of the sofas and chairs,

this kind of old world look.

I wanna pair it with IKEA chairs,

something that's easily foldable

and you can bring up more if you want.

I also really like the pairing of old

and new together at all times.

We're trying to create a thread for a small space.

Even the cotton canvas of the chairs,

it picks up on the curtains that we're doing elsewhere.

In the dining space,

I'm also featuring another of Carl Derco's work.

This actual table,

he designed it for an outdoor rooftop patio and bar.

So we know that it can hold up to messy spilly people.

I don't wanna use chairs, I want a backless stool.

You can kind of push them under the table

if you're having a big party in the apartment.

These are the cutest, and they're upholstered,

so the seat is comfy.

The design is from Garlow Canteen from Adentro,

and I think they're really neat.

[upbeat music] [pencil scribbling]

So now let's talk lighting.

Let's talk lighting.

For the lighting,

I hate the gold and the brass and wood ceiling fan.

If there's one place

where these college kids are gonna maybe invest in,

it would be to hire an electrician

to replace that ceiling fan.

I would love to also bring a little bit more

of that stainless steel energy

from the kitchen into this room.

I'm gonna bring in this catenated

bowl uplight fixture into that room,

which I think will provide a really nice diffused light

into the space.

On either side of the sofa,

I'm gonna use these two little Analuisa Corrigan

table lamps with a skirted lampshade, which I really love.

And I think those add a nice softness to this space.

I really love a ceiling fan.

I really hate a ceiling fan with a light in it.

I can't tell you why, I just don't like it.

You can take the ceiling fan away,

put it in a closet somewhere, whatever,

bring it back whenever you move.

But I wanna have a light in here that is ambient.

We can have something like paper lantern

like this one from IKEA right over the living space.

It feels very flattering.

It's a perfect glow on everyone

that you're having over in your space.

On either side of the sofa,

I want to flank that with two lamps

that really give more of that ambient light into the room.

These particular lamps are vintage by Paul Mayen.

I chose this pendant for the dining area.

I think it's really cool

because it picks up on the color of the walls.

It has this sort of flowy effect that matches the drapery,

and it also produces a direct lighting,

which is perfect for an evening with wine,

doing your homework.

In every kitchen,

I love to have a nightlight, in this kitchen,

I want to have a small table lamp.

It just kind of gives a nice glow to the space.

Realistically, I am not going to be removing

out of the ceiling the ceiling fan and light,

but I do wanna add a little bit something.

So I love the idea

of putting two sweet little sconces on either side

of the television just to give a bit

of face-level ambient light.

Plugins being the necessary thing

because I'm not doing electrical work

in my nine month rental apartment.

These are from Eny Lee Parker. I absolutely adore her work.

This is the kind of thing that I

as a college student would save up all

of my side job money to buy

and then hang on with me for like the rest of my life.

And also how perfect

that Eny makes these little sweet five-petal flower shapes,

which goes so beautifully with the floor tile pattern.

I also really am into the whole cordless

battery-operated lamp thing right now

because I could bring it from the laptop stand

over to the kitchen at night almost like a candlestick

that I'm just kind of bringing around with me.

Or put it on the dining table

while I'm doing some work light at night.

This little lamp is the lamp that could.

[upbeat music] [pencil scribbling]

So now we're going to talk about decor.

We're really trying to create a space that feels collected,

that feels layered.

The first thing I want to do is have a moment

that's above the sofa.

This here is a Rococo mirror carved out of wood,

something that could be found at an antique store.

Over on the bookcase,

we have plenty of space to showcase objects.

I really love the idea of having shelves mounted on stands

that just go up there.

It also references the wave effect of the stenciling

that separates a dining area from the living room.

And it creates this really cool cohesiveness to the space.

I'm still not 100% sold on the separation

between the kitchen and the living space.

So I do wanna add curtains of some sort.

So many college students have like strong warm memories

of beaded curtains,

but rather than go full coastal with like wood beads,

I'm envisioning shimmer screen.

They are metal-beaded curtains.

And we would kind of drape them down

and then just hold them

with these little hand shape curtain holders,

like curtain tiebacks.

And they would just kind of like hang here.

They're pretty affordable,

and you don't have to use the whole thing.

So I would probably just, to save budget,

kind of just have a little bit on the sides,

and they're meant to swag and stay open.

So they're a visual demarcation of space,

but they don't literally close.

Realistically, I am keeping the ceiling fan.

And one of the things as a designer

that I love doing is anything that has to stay,

I try to make it an active choice by bringing matching

or coordinating other things in that finish,

which is why I did a brass faucet

and I'm doing a brass gold color-beaded curtain.

So everything feels like it goes together

and feels like a deliberate coordination.

This was sort of designed to be kind of a neutral backdrop

for maybe three disparate personalities.

And I think a lot of that texture and color

and playfulness will come in with whatever the artwork is

that they decide to pin to the corkboard walls,

whether it's whatever project they're working on

or research or maybe some artwork that they really love.

But I think there's a few other ways through decor

and furnishing that we can

sort of bring that color and texture into the space.

So in the kitchen for example,

I'm gonna bring in some big woven baskets,

and then I'm gonna put this great IKEA clock

on top of the mirrored pedestal

because I think it's just an incredible color blue.

And this room needed that shock of blue in it.

And then I'm gonna add just a touch more blue

with a lovely sort of delved painted vase,

very similar to one that I own

on the coffee table for flowers,

which I think always helps brighten up a space.

On this Samsung frame TV,

which is realistically where the art is gonna go

on the walls in this sort of an apartment

for college students, I have artist Serge Gay Junior,

he's a fabulous muralist and artist in San Francisco.

This is one of his student pieces. I love it.

And finally, no sofa's complete without a blanket,

a lush, fluffy, comfy, cozy, beautiful throw.

It's just a really delightful bright pop of color,

and you can wear her out.

It's fashion, it's home interiors, it's everything.

And so what I want to do here is create symmetry

by having pedestals,

and on top of the pedestals, having big, beautiful urns.

But we really wanna create a sense of order,

a sense of specialness.

And we're trying to have a division between the spaces.

Inside of the urns,

you could have real plants like these ferns.

You could also have fake plants, like these ones from IKEA.

There's a gap between the top of the kitchen upper

and the ceiling.

It's a perfect place to add extra storage.

You can put baskets up at the top here.

[upbeat music] [pencil scribbling]

I'm really happy with how this design came together.

I feel like the design for this room is really a space

where some students could be very free

to sort of express their interests,

always be working, always be developing,

and having a space that also works for entertaining.

It's really important for everything

to be pretty flexible

and for these kids to be able to come in there,

make it their own quickly, and move out quickly,

and probably take with them to their next spot.

Wow, this design to me feels really welcoming.

It feels very warm, it feels very collected.

It really feels like a gathering space.

It feels like a place where I might study a little bit more

than what I did honestly.

It's a really warm environment,

and I would be probably sad to pack it up and move on.

But I know that I would have pieces with me that I bought,

that I purchased,

that I would carry on into a totally new life.

My final thoughts on this space are, I love it.

I think the lavender was really a success.

I would absolutely have adored living in a space like this.

Realistically in my wildest dreams

would this have been my college experience.

But you know, anything is possible.

[upbeat music] [pencil scribbling]

[upbeat music]

Oh wow. Oh my gosh.

Very cool. What?

Okay, can we talk about your color?

Oh my gosh, thank you, yes.

This person is living in a lavender fantasia

who's wanting to explore lavender and tomato red together.

[Darren] I love this beautiful orange red floor.

[Noz] Thank you so much.

These are actually peel and stick floor tiles.

Amazing. So creative.

I love a peel and stick for a student

who has nine and a half months to live in this place.

So true. Darren,

I am obsessed with this what appears

to be mosaic tile work across the headers.

what's going on there?

It's actually stencil work.

We're bringing stenciling back.

We're bringing faux finish back.

Xavier, I really love how you've married

the aesthetic movement with these like functional pieces.

I think there's a really cool language going on here.

I was kind of thinking about what pieces of furniture,

like somebody might be able

to source from their local Salvation Army,

because that was how a lot of people

furnished their apartments when I was in college.

Whoever lives here has a very strong design sense.

They wanna be mood boarding all day and.

Art history and architecture.

Architecture for sure. Yeah.

I think Darren's students are studying art history.

Or like English lit. Ooh.

Your student,

I actually wanna say is like a very like chic

like physics major.

Cute.

I'm getting like color,

so I'm getting like either like a fashion student

or a design student.

I think it's like really smart with the pattern

and the purple and lilac and this kind of golden green.

I think it's pretty forward.

Oh my gosh, thank you. Totally.

I see that.

A physics design double major.

I love that. That student does it all.