We gave interior designers Joy Moyler, Darren Jett, and Noz Nozawa a photo of the same dated 90s living—then asked each of them to transform the space in their particular style, however they pleased with no restrictions. Three artists, one canvas, each bringing something different to the space. Which updated living room would you bring into the 21st century?
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 These three interior designers have been given a photograph of a dated 90s living room.
00:05 They have free reign to design it in any way they please.
00:08 My name is Joy and my design style is classic, comfortable, and relaxed.
00:14 My name is Darren Jett and my design approach is cinematic, romantic, and sensual.
00:19 I'm Naz and my interior design style is colorful, eclectic, and wild.
00:23 No clients, no budget, just blank space.
00:27 My first impressions of this dated living room are,
00:31 my god, the rock wall is for the gym, not for the living room.
00:35 First impressions of this sweet little living room are that I recognize my childhood in this one.
00:41 I'm kind of living for this rose pattern sofa situation, but she's a little tired.
00:46 Let's bring it up to speed like 35 to 40 years.
00:49 It is a small space. I do think that the small space actually can work toward benefit.
00:53 There's something quite nice about having a rather intimate space in a house.
00:56 [upbeat music]
00:59 The goals starting out for me is to have a sense of cohesion,
01:04 give a little bit more moodiness to the overall feel of this room.
01:08 So what I would like to do with this living room is to really embrace the fact that it's small.
01:12 I would love to think about enclosing this room and making it just a bit more intimate.
01:17 Overall, my vision for this space is that this needs to be a room that is both wonderful for lounging
01:22 and cozying in while you're watching TV, but also really conducive to conversation and gathering.
01:27 [upbeat music]
01:29 The room as a whole right now is very, very cold.
01:32 The wall-to-wall carpet is going to go. That's a very dated sort of application.
01:38 So first of all, I'm seeing this flooring and I kind of want to guess that it's a lie.
01:42 There's no way that the carpet is truly this white, right?
01:46 Like this is Photoshop. I can't handle the idea of just like dirty feet and dirty footprints all over the place.
01:51 I mean, the oatmeal carpet's just not really working.
01:54 I do like the idea of having carpet in a small space.
01:57 I think it makes it feel really, really nice underfoot.
01:59 I think if we can actually do something that is a bit dramatic, right?
02:03 Think about a very cool leopard print, perhaps.
02:06 A lot of people might assume that leopard is a pattern that is a bit outrageous.
02:11 I actually think that in a small room, leopard can almost act like a neutral.
02:15 I'm going to take all of this white carpeting out.
02:17 No more wall-to-wall and we're going to replace it with oak floors.
02:20 I don't want to put all of this hardwood in and then cover it completely back up.
02:24 So there's this beautiful rug company, Temple Temple Temple.
02:28 They make some amazing rugs where there's actually like holes in the rug so that you have the rug down.
02:33 It's cozy. It gives you that softness, but you can still see the hardwood floor through it.
02:38 I'm going to bring in a wood floor that makes it a little bit more current.
02:42 And what that's going to immediately do is warm the space up.
02:46 We're going to replace this wall-to-wall, boring carpet with an area rug.
02:53 This beautiful new Doris Leslie Blau area rug on this warm, sexy, chocolate herringbone wood floor was chosen for its graphic nature.
03:02 I really, really love graphics in spaces because the linear effect actually adds length to the room.
03:08 The white walls are doing nothing for this space whatsoever.
03:14 What I really want to do is to think about cladding all of the walls in a beautiful, rich, saturated color.
03:21 I love the idea of doing something like a rich lacquer on the walls.
03:25 Maybe it's in a sort of chocolate world.
03:28 A company like Fine Paints of Europe makes really beautiful lacquered paints.
03:32 So if we have something that has a bit of sheen to it, whenever you have light coming in, it's really going to bounce all that light off the walls.
03:38 It's going to make a small room feel bigger.
03:41 In the alcove, I really want to use more lacquer, but instead of it being chocolate, I want it to be a paprika color like this here.
03:48 The existing walls in this living room are very, very boring.
03:51 I mean, they're just as bland as, I don't know, an overdone pancake.
03:55 So I'm going to apply texture to the wall that also has some warmth to it.
04:00 My approach is to have a back-painted glass on the wall and add a metal framework to the wall, which is a braided metal in a bronze finish.
04:12 It's going to create wonderful reflection in the room as the day progresses.
04:17 I'm really excited about just keeping it light and airy in here, but adding texture.
04:21 I don't want to just do paint on the walls, even though that feels like an obvious choice.
04:25 I'm going to do grass cloth.
04:27 So I brought this grass cloth.
04:29 What I really love about this particular material is it's a grass cloth that's still quite soft.
04:33 This texture, I really think, is going to transform the space.
04:36 I really want to bring more natural light in, so I'm going to replace this singular window with floor-to-ceiling glass doors that really give you an opportunity to experience the garden when you're inside of this room.
04:49 If we're able to use this room behind this wall as a wet bar, it would be really cool if we could actually create an opening on this wall where you could have access to drinks being made.
04:59 Underneath the opening where the bar is would actually have doors, and those doors would house extra storage.
05:04 I would actually clad those doors in a bronze mirror.
05:07 This is very '70s, '80s, where there's almost kind of a postmodern abandoning of trim around thresholds and openings, right?
05:14 Like, you just have baseboards.
05:15 So I'm going to actually further emphasize the opening into the space by putting trim around this threshold.
05:22 And then over the window, I want there to be architectural symmetry and continuity there.
05:26 So the same thing I do here, I'm going to do a wood cornice over this window.
05:30 And I think that's going to be really successful because the cornice will sort of shape the window.
05:34 When I say cornice, what I mean is it is an actual decorative thing that you put over the top of your window.
05:40 So you're not changing the window, and it's just going to be this, like, beautiful little arch moment over the window right there.
05:45 All of the arches are making me feel like we're stuck in the '90s.
05:49 I think if we're able to keep the idea of the doorway and keep the idea of the bookcases, but just cap them off in a nice, intentional, rectangular form, it will make the room feel very intentional, and it'll make the room feel very concise.
06:03 Getting rid of that ugly maple wood is really important for me.
06:06 So let's think about what we can do in place of that maple wood.
06:11 Maybe it's something like a beautiful stainless steel that we actually do all along the baseboard, and we also trim out all of the doorways and openings.
06:19 That would really break the traditional aspects of the room and bring it up to the modern day.
06:25 The existing ceiling is very, very flat, very boring.
06:30 And we have an opportunity to raise the ceiling at least 18 inches because there's a plenum space up there around the ductwork.
06:39 So what we're going to do is we're going to create a trade ceiling, which is an opportunity to just sort of vault the ceiling a little bit, angle it out at the sides.
06:47 You really are going to get a feeling that this room has gained additional square footage.
06:53 The ceiling we're going to treat in the same exact finish, this beautiful chocolate lacquer.
06:58 It's really going to bounce the light off of the room and make the space feel even larger.
07:02 I actually want to add crown molding back.
07:05 I think there's something really lovely about that.
07:07 The ceiling is also going to get a grass cloth, but we're going to do something that's like bold and warm and rich and lovely.
07:13 And it's yellow.
07:14 When it's up on the ceiling, it doesn't glow onto your face and make everything glow yellow.
07:18 It actually just makes everything kind of glow happy.
07:21 I love a fireplace.
07:25 You can never get rid of a fireplace if you have one in your home.
07:29 This fireplace, however, it's not giving anything but depression.
07:33 So I have a personal strong feeling about keeping fireplaces if you have a fireplace.
07:39 So this one stays.
07:41 It's just too big.
07:42 The fireplace stonework just feels like a three-year-old is going to get up there and start climbing this thing and it's going to be a major hazard and lawsuits are going to ensue.
07:51 So that's going to be gone.
07:53 And another thing about it is it's creating such depth in the room.
07:57 It really is retracting from the available square footage.
08:01 So what I'm going to do here is simply apply a wonderful new contemporary marble mantle.
08:07 We're going to lower the hearth and we're just going to clean that whole elevation up.
08:11 I don't know that I love a wood-burning fireplace in a room this small.
08:14 Anyone who has one knows soot comes out.
08:17 And no matter how clean your flue is, you just end up with like black dust in different parts.
08:22 So I want to replace it with a gas insert because then you can just hit a button and then the fire turns on and then I'm going to adorn it.
08:29 I would love to source a whole lot of mix-and-match delft tile from like the 18th century to adorn the entire fascia of this fireplace.
08:38 I love the idea of actually having a fireplace that is sort of part of the wall.
08:43 Let's actually have it be something that sort of recesses into the background a little bit.
08:48 That's why I'm treating the walls in this case in the same exact finish as the rest of the room.
08:51 I really think that the room has a lot of focal points right now and I want to have the function of a fireplace but not have it jump out at me.
08:59 And then flanking the fireplace, we're going to keep the same idea of the bookcases, but just make them a little bit narrower and make them just feel a bit more intentional than what we have currently.
09:08 And now let's talk about these built-ins.
09:09 I actually really like them.
09:11 So what I want to do is bring them forward just a teeny bit so that the fireplace and the bookcases are all on the same plane.
09:16 And then I'm going to make these prettier.
09:18 I want them to just be painted white and then we'll have actually this wallpaper on the rear of all of the bookcases.
09:25 And then I have this idea that we're going to put bows.
09:28 I am presently really, really, really in admiration of the late, great, legendary designer Mario Boata.
09:35 And I'm kind of almost thinking of this whole space as like a tribute, like my take on Boata.
09:39 So yeah, I want to do bows.
09:41 We're going to do bows everywhere.
09:42 We're going to start with wooden bows that become a part of the adornment of the bookcases.
09:47 So first of all, I'm pretty sure this TV has a built-in VCR player.
09:55 I mean, the luxury, right?
09:57 The existing layout has this bulbous media cabinet, which is just taking up a lot of space.
10:03 So that's going to go.
10:04 What I'd like to do is to have a large sofa underneath the window.
10:07 The sofa that we're creating is actually based on the Lera sofa, which is a 1970s Italian design.
10:12 And we would cover that in a beautiful mohair.
10:14 Perhaps it's in a sort of nude color like this.
10:17 And I think that would work really wonderfully with the chocolate lacquered walls and the leopard carpet that we have underfoot.
10:22 I'm replacing this massive media cabinet here with a very slim sofa from Chai Ming.
10:29 And it's light in color, so it isn't overwhelming in the space.
10:33 The seating is now against this wall in order to enjoy the view beyond into the garden.
10:41 The tables flanking the sofa are from Restoration Hardware.
10:45 They're just a very sculptural, almost I-beam side table, which is a multipurpose.
10:50 It could be a drink table. It could be a snack table.
10:52 I'm going to do something kind of weird.
10:54 I really like conversation pits. I have forever.
10:57 But I'm not going to remove the floor. I'm not going to sink the floor because it's just not realistic for a space like this.
11:02 I have this kind of wacky idea.
11:04 The whole entire perimeter of the room becomes one giant built-in sofa.
11:11 I absolutely love this Vuza textile.
11:14 And I think this would be so fun to have the entire couch be in this fabric with like a ruffle trim on the bottom.
11:20 And then also, one little tribute to Boata is he always liked coral, like coral orange with cobalt blue together.
11:27 So I found this very cute orange trim that I want to put around the perimeter of the ruffle just as a little nod.
11:33 I want there still to be storage.
11:35 And when you have a TV in the room, you still need to have somewhere for all of your cable boxes and your Internet box and your Wi-Fi repeater and your PS4.
11:43 So by doing a ruffle along the bottom edge, that will allow me to like sneak underneath the skirt because you just have literally under the couch sneaky storage all the way around the room.
11:54 In addition to a sofa, we always want to have a side chair.
11:57 In this case, I love the idea of having an Olivier Morgue side chair.
12:01 The Olivier Morgue is actually going to be covered in a sort of paprika color fabric.
12:05 The blue lounge chair in the room is this great sort of modern, very deco-aframed lounge chair from Chai Ming.
12:14 The drink table next to it is from Cliff Young.
12:18 And it is just a really cool faceted shape.
12:22 If I'm going to fill this whole thing with a couch, there's not a whole lot of room for coffee tables.
12:27 So I want to use these little bistro tables.
12:30 They're almost like a TV table, right?
12:32 Like TV dinners, remember those?
12:33 Maybe you don't because maybe you're like 17.
12:35 You would basically have a C-shaped table that can tuck underneath the ruffles so that it comes really close to you.
12:40 The coffee table is a very contemporary marble-on-marble sculptural element that really takes pride of place in this space.
12:48 And it's low and it's sexy and the base is absolute black.
12:52 But the top is this wonderful gold, white, black, veiny Saint Laurent marble, which is my absolute favorite.
12:59 This is definitely a hangout spot.
13:01 I really want people to enjoy themselves in it.
13:03 We're going to have a coffee table.
13:04 Think about drinks being poured.
13:06 Think about, you know, great conversation that's going on.
13:08 In addition to that, we're going to have an ashtray in this room.
13:11 It's going to be a cool object to have.
13:13 And that's what this is over here, this sort of red, goat-skin ashtray by Aldo Turo.
13:17 The dressers flanking the fireplace are from the Bruno effect.
13:21 They're a very contemporary piece with wood, with marble tops.
13:26 So now let's talk lighting.
13:30 We're creating an intimate environment where lighting is absolutely critical.
13:34 The sconces flanking the sofa are from First Dibs.
13:38 They're a vintage marble and Murano glass sconce.
13:42 They're generous in size, but they give off a lovely, lovely glow.
13:46 Behind that back-painted glass and that braided metal, ooh, it just makes the wall sing.
13:54 The two pendants hanging directly above the chest flanking the fireplace are from Studio Van Dekker.
14:00 And they are hand-blown glass.
14:03 Directly above it is this very sort of art deco-y, almost industrial pendant fixture from Hans Jakobson.
14:13 It's an antique.
14:14 I don't want a lot of overhead lighting.
14:16 What I want to do is put sconces all the way around.
14:19 There's this amazing sconce from Urban Electric, which is so cute and adorable.
14:24 And it has this swoopy shape.
14:26 There's a ruffled lampshade.
14:28 I love the idea of having those at key moments around the room.
14:31 Behind the sofa, adjacent to the window, I would pair two beautiful sconces by D'Amore Studio.
14:37 Additionally, we are going to have lighting in the ceiling.
14:40 I think every room benefits from a ceiling light.
14:42 We're also going to have lighting in the bookcases as well.
14:45 Up at the top, we're going to have little pin lights, very, very small, maybe an inch in diameter.
14:49 They just shine down on our objects below.
14:52 So now the decor is where we go really wild.
14:57 One of the things I absolutely loved about Mario Boacca's work is this one room that has soft yellow walls
15:02 and these giant, dramatic blue silk ribbons that held up all of these paintings of dogs all over the walls.
15:10 I love this idea, right?
15:11 So instead of big silk ribbons, there are these cute little metal hooks.
15:15 These are like $10 from like Crate and Kids or something.
15:18 And instead of silk ribbon, you could totally just use like furniture tape.
15:23 This one is iconic.
15:24 I love this pop of orange.
15:26 I'm doing like this all the way down.
15:29 I'm going to hang gold gilded frame portraits of like dogs and birds that are all like painted by friends of mine.
15:35 So it's really personal.
15:36 And then I'm going to put them in front of the bookcase too.
15:39 And it's just on a nail so you can take it off very easily when you need to get the books behind it.
15:42 It's not impractical.
15:44 It's just another way for you to be able to decorate, especially if you don't have tons of walls to put artwork.
15:48 On the window, instead of doing a proper curtain, what I really wanted to do was to have more of a bamboo shade.
15:54 But, you know, I have to have drapery in every project.
15:57 I'm sorry, I can't help myself.
15:59 So in the threshold here, I want to have an integrated curtain in that doorway that you can sort of pull open and pull closed.
16:05 Of course, in every room, you have to have at least one piece of art, sort of one focal point.
16:11 I think in a space like this where it's sort of leaning in a more modern direction, it'd be very cool to break that with some tension.
16:18 So let's have a little Roman statue perhaps on that countertop at the wet bar.
16:22 The mirror over the fireplace is fabulous.
16:25 This is a piece by Claude Lelan.
16:27 It's a brass piece.
16:29 Every room also benefits from a plant, especially when you're designing a room that is meant to feel lush and sexy and cool.
16:35 Add a plant.
16:36 I love a kentia palm tree.
16:38 A kentia palm will absolutely survive in a space that has minimal light.
16:41 And that's what we're going to have here.
16:43 And that's also going to provide a little bit of mystery as you're walking around it and sort of seeing things from different perspectives.
16:49 The art on the walls flanking the fireplace directly placed above the chest is from Michael Dawkins.
16:54 It's this very moody black and white, and they're sort of mysterious, and I kind of like them for that.
17:00 On the coffee table is a almost kinetic candle holder from Ice Rune.
17:06 Also, the vase on one of the restoration side tables.
17:10 And I really like that palette of very sort of neutral, sort of crafted pieces.
17:17 So now over the fireplace, I'd like to do a mirror just to bounce some light around, give the fireplace wall a little bit of lightness, a little bit of luminosity.
17:24 I want to revisit Rogan Gregory.
17:26 I really love his work.
17:27 He's so brilliant, and he makes these amazing blob-o, weird-o, gypsum mirrors.
17:32 And they're sort of an homage to Wendell Castle, who's also a mutual inspiration for me.
17:37 I think that would be such a spectacular decor moment over the fireplace.
17:41 Speaking of the fireplace, I love fireplace screens.
17:44 I recently discovered Philip Nimmo, and he has these hilarious, like pop art-inspired fire screens.
17:50 And there's one that says "Hot," and he literally makes it in blue.
17:54 So I was like, "This is meant to be."
17:56 So it could be like a Paris Hilton, like "That's hot" kind of homage.
18:00 But it also is so ridiculous and literal because the fireplace is hot.
18:03 My approach for the placement of the television within this room is to bury it in this wall.
18:11 It's a pivot that spins out.
18:14 It's totally invisible because the grid work of the metal conceals it.
18:20 Everybody doesn't want to look at a television all day.
18:22 I think it's much more important to look at nature.
18:25 And you're able to sit here and look at the outdoor gardens without having the sofa at the back of the wall here.
18:32 And craning your neck to say, "Hello, roses! Hello, roses!"
18:37 We also have a challenge where there's currently a TV in the space, and we don't really want to eliminate that television.
18:42 The original room is basically a TV room.
18:45 The TV is the focus of the room.
18:47 In a modern lifestyle where rooms have to do double duty, you don't want to have the TV be the center of attention.
18:54 What I would like to do is to maintain the idea of having a TV, but having the option to have it completely disappear.
19:01 The very easy solution is to have a projector on the wall where the TV would normally go.
19:07 What I would like to do is to actually integrate that projector into the ceiling.
19:11 And at the push of a button, the projector screen could come down, and it would cover the wet bar here.
19:16 And you could watch TV from the sofa that's across from it.
19:19 So now let's talk about TVs.
19:21 Back in the '90s, it pretty much took over your whole room.
19:25 So this is where we started.
19:27 We had a big TV living in a giant case, and underneath it was probably a bunch of components.
19:33 So I'm actually going to put the TV exactly where it is right now, but thanks to the advent of flat screens, and also thank you, Samsung, not an ad.
19:41 Samsung frame TVs are actually one of my favorite things to do for clients.
19:45 And I am going to utilize this whole ribbon idea of, like, this is how the paintings are hung on the wall, to disguise the TV as a painting.
19:56 I think I was able to achieve the goals here of creating a much more livable, relaxing environment that really paid homage to nature
20:06 by having the sofa facing the great outdoors instead of it being slapped up to the window with your window view behind you.
20:14 I think that we are able to turn this drab room into something that's more of a fab room.
20:20 It's totally fine to have a space that's a bit small and maybe a little bit dark.
20:25 I think sometimes it's really good to actually lean into some of the challenges that we have, because it can create an outcome that's really special.
20:31 It makes it feel very intimate, and it's like a hug, you know? It's like a very sexy hug.
20:36 I love this room so much.
20:39 I don't know that it's for everyone, and that's the point of design.
20:43 But for me, and for the folks who are really into, like, 1980s chintz revival, like, blue and white, light but bold, and, like, overall kind of light and airy, but still there's a lot going on, I think this was a successful design.
20:58 Oh my god.
21:06 Look at this.
21:07 Hey.
21:08 We're so different.
21:09 Wow, wow, wow.
21:11 Did you keep the TV anywhere?
21:12 I did.
21:13 Where is it?
21:14 It's hiding. It's a Samsung frame TV.
21:16 Oh, of course.
21:17 And there's the cavaliered King Charles Spaniel photo on it.
21:19 A little Mario Buarra reference.
21:21 Thank you. This whole thing is a tribute. Thank you for noticing.
21:24 And I love your hit of that red. What's that red? I'm a lover of red. So that nice afterglow there is really kind of hot.
21:31 Yeah, so I made this little vestibule here, like a really beautiful kind of orangey red, and I think it's just kind of glowing out in the space.
21:36 Love, love.
21:37 Yeah, a little pop of color I think was kind of important for the room to see.
21:42 Yes, yes. I did a few.
21:43 Yeah, you do. Mine is a little bit more subtle and serene.
21:46 No, I love it. It's so chic.
21:48 Sort of dark deco-ish, but.
21:49 I love that.
21:50 I love the deco.
21:51 Like my personality, dark and deco. Yeah.
21:53 [Laughter]
21:55 (upbeat music)
21:58 [Music]