See Inside a Cozy Brooklyn Apartment That Rents for $3600 a Month
Adrienne Breaux
·6 min read
Holly Li and her partner rent this apartment in Brooklyn. "Many of the pieces in the house have been mine for almost ten years!" Holly exclaims. "Most of the rugs, for example, were from an internship in Rabat, Morocco I had when I was 19. Most of the posters are from my internship at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. Strange that teenage-me would dictate so much of my lasting aesthetic!" Credit: Adri TanCredit: Adri Tan
"We removed the doors to the bedroom so that you could see into (almost) every room in the apartment from any other room," Holly continues. "After doing so, the living room really feels like the *heart* of the apartment: You can hang out with a friend lounging on the bed while laying on the couch! It's also the central space that welcomes you as you walk up the stairs, and it's bathed in light from three directions (the windows in the kitchen, the windows in the bedroom, and its skylight.)" Credit: Adri TanCredit: Adri Tan
The quilt in the bedroom is an antique and both paper lamps are DIYs. The green canvas painting was also a DIY. The couch is from blu dot and the orange console is originally CB2 but bought on Facebook Marketplace. The Mart Stam chair was an antique store find. Credit: Adri TanCredit: Adri Tan
"I DIY-ed a huge green painting in the living room — we found the canvas in perfect condition, propped against a trash can on the street one day," Holly begins. "Turns out that making abstract art is VERY hard — because you never know when to stop adding things! I plan to keep working on it." Credit: Holly LiCredit: Holly Li
"One of my favorite parts of the living room is the locker (from Big ReUse in Gowanus), which houses our cleaning and packing supplies," Holly admits. "The 'Conference Center' sign is vintage, and marks the entrance to the bathroom!" Credit: Holly LiCredit: Holly Li
Holly explains that the dining room table is an old biergarten table, "but we've repurposed the benches for other parts of the apartment (for example: one of them serves as a bookshelf here)." The school chairs were a free stoop find, and they also love the room's original fireplace mantel. Holly says her partner made the coffee bar himself. Credit: Holly LiCredit: Holly Li
Holly explains that the art in the dining room is from "all over: the "GET F%@#" print is from Aesthetic Union in SF; the art on top of it is an original Saul Steinberg we found at an estate sale. The blue frame on the left wall is my favorite art in the whole house: an old Communist poster of party members." Credit: Holly LiCredit: Holly Li
"We love our kitchen — it's spacious by NYC standards!" Holly explains. "The rug is antique from upstate NYC. We love to eat on vintage colorful school trays (housed above the fridge). We covered the walls of the kitchen with menus of memorable meals (we've had quite a few!)" Credit: Holly LiCredit: Holly Li
Describe your home’s style in 5 words or less:"Industrial communist schoolhouse, antique, and cozy." Credit: Holly LiCredit: Holly Li
What's your best decorating, shopping, cleaning, or organizing advice? "Don't hurry! Take your time to fill the space with things that really bring you joy." Credit: Holly LiCredit: Holly Li
"Outside of the office is this strangely-shaped nook space. One day I was looking on Craigslist and I saw someone advertising a DIY wooden floating desk — and sure enough, it perfectly fit the dimensions," Holly shares. "We like to sit here and read or journal. School chair is another stooping find; decor on the desk is a mix of antiques (oil pastel paintings) or international finds (Mexican tin frame, Japanese figurines)." Credit: Holly LiCredit: Holly Li
Holly Li and her partner signed for this two-bedroom, 700-square-foot apartment in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, sight-unseen. “We were moving to NYC at the time, and worried about being able to find a place. We did a video tour of this apartment the day it came out, and were notified that we had gotten it as we were taxi-ing, getting ready to embark on a long flight. We bought plane WiFi *just* so we could wire our deposit and not lose the spot,” she writes.
“Three years later and this apartment is one of the best things that ever happened to us,” Holly continues. “It’s a home base for our friends; it’s housed our families for holidays and family weddings.”
“My partner and I treat designing the space as a love language: Every few months, we take an evening together to subtly rearrange art or furniture, just to breathe new life into the space and find renewed inspiration,” Holly shares.
“Our friends joke that we’re obsessed with school — in my design work, I love to employ ‘textbook’ or ‘academic’ design systems, and it’s true of our space too: Between the library cart, locker, school chairs, and randomly strewn textbooks, our apartment’s central visual theme is probably the schoolhouse. I love how playful kids are allowed to be — and I love learning — so ‘schoolhouse’ feels apt,” Holly continues to describe.
“My partner and I are also both Chinese American, so we have a few Asian touches throughout the house: Communist posters (I love to collect them), lunar calendars, etc.”
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