Sometimes we speak to designers who are TV stars, but it’s not often we speak to designers who are doing projects in buildings that are TV stars. Yes, you read that right, and this Upper West Side apartment in New York City is the location of the smash-hit Selena Gomez vehicle Only Murders in the Building. And as anyone familiar with the show will know, that means it’s in a neo-Gothic Revival building that seems to radiate with charm and character.
On the outside, that is.
On the inside, when the founder of Hamilton Design Associates, Ellen Hamilton, got to work on it, the apartment had been totally stripped back. ‘The architect had made it look like a TriBeCa loft,’ she says. ‘And the absence of detail was problematic.’
That’s not to say that Ellen’s approach to the house design was to fill it with antiques to bring back some of its former historic charm. Instead, she wanted to use layers of subtle texture and allow the incredible light that filtered in to be an architectural detail of its own. ‘I’ve done maximalism in the past, and now I’m doing minimalism,’ Ellen says.
‘We started with the concept of a white Parisian apartment, and then I set to work designing all the custom upholstery to ensure every piece was exquisitely made and built.’ Originally, the owner had wanted to buy a whole apartment of new furniture, but Ellen saw that it was actually a mix of what the owner already owned and antiques that were needed to make the custom pieces seem familiar. ‘Patina is so important,’ Ellen says. ‘I live with lots of old things myself, and I know that pieces you’ve had for a long time and still love are what give you comfort.’
And so she pieced together this quietly minimalist and quietly luxe apartment – a mix of very new and very old, and with so much air that nothing seems out of place.
The Living Room
Ellen's favorite feature of the apartment is the natural light. ‘We're on an upper floor, and so it gets quite a bit of light from the internal courtyard,’ Ellen says. ‘And because it's a limestone building, it means that the light that filters in takes on a yellow tint, which is so rare for New York – the light here is normally blue. There is something quite magical about it – it's like a religious painting.’
For this reason, she used a lime-wash finish on the walls, 'which gets a diffused edge from the diffused light,’ Ellen says, in Farrow & Ball's All White. ‘This is just my perfect white paint – it's not cool, and it's not warm, but somewhere in between.’
As for the curation of furniture, around the custom pieces of upholstery, Ellen wanted the feel of some soft antiques and ‘the air of improvisation. The owner said she wanted the space to look like a "rich college kid," so I said that she couldn't have bookshelves here and instead needed books on the floor. It seems more casual, and its sense of simplicity actually invites you to pick up and read the books in a way that their spine on a shelf doesn't do.’
The coffee table is from Galerie Provenance in LA. ‘It's just a hunk of tree and probably 200 years old,’ Ellen says. ‘I felt we needed it because of the texture.’
The Entryway
Ellen wanted the entryway to set the tone of the apartment from the moment you walk in, so you are met with nothing but herringbone wood flooring, soft white lime-wash walls… and a rocking horse that already belonged to the owner. ‘The apartment feels like a place of respite and calm – it's very chilled and almost makes you sleepy,’ Ellen says of her neutral color scheme and the open, uncluttered spaces.
The oak floor was installed new, but it was too shiny and box-fresh – not relaxed enough for how Ellen wanted the space to feel. ‘We'd looked at reclaimed floorboards but decided they were all too beaten up and would always look a bit crummy,’ Ellen says. ‘So I had the laborers beating the new boards with chains, scraping them until they were perfect.’
The Dining Room
‘One of the ideas that the owner of this apartment holds dear is that every chair is as different as the person who sits there,’ Ellen says, explaining why none of the dining chairs matched. In fact, Ellen had spent a long time sourcing plenty of different options for new dining chairs, but in the end none made the client feel as at home as the ones she already had, collected during her life in places like London, Paris, and New York.
‘They're all so different – one is metal, one is spray-painted silver, others are antique wood,’ Ellen says. ‘But together they work because each one has its own story and was a part of the owner's history.’
The ceiling light was custom-designed by Ellen. ‘The owner wanted something that would sparkle but also be barely there, so we finished this light in satin brass, which has a very dull gleam,’ she says.
The Kitchen
‘We designed the light over the kitchen island so as to feel like it was barely there – practically ethereal,’ Ellen says. In fact, the whole kitchen is designed to recede rather than stand out. ‘We have the one tall wall of cabinets but wanted nothing to get too in the way of any sight lines,’ Ellen says of her decision to keep most of the upper portion of the walls bare.
In the corner of the kitchen is a reading nook, filled with a built-in sofa designed by Ellen. ‘The owner loves to fold her feet up under herself, and so that means comfy rather than banquette seating,’ Ellen says. ‘And she knew this was a magical spot which caught the morning light – it just had to be used for reading instead of the more expected breakfast nook with a bench that we had originally planned.’
The Bedroom
‘The bedroom feels empty and blank, but that was intentional,’ Ellen says. ‘The owner wanted this room to have as little personality as possible, and as she also uses it to exercise, she didn't even want a rug. And so we kept it almost totally bare – truly, she asked for a space that was devoid of character and had nothing to say.’
Instead, the light filters in through the big arched window and creates an almost monastic sense of peace. ‘At one point we weren't even going to have any art on the walls at all,’ Ellen says.
The Bathroom
Ellen describes the bathroom as being ‘really pretty’ and says that now that she is used to tadelakt – a water-safe version of lime wash used here in the shower – she never wants to use anything else. ‘Tadelakt bathrooms are so sensual and warm to the touch,’ Ellen says. ‘Too much tile can feel so cold and heavy, so I love to play with this finish instead.’
The bench inside the shower area invites true moments of meditation during the morning rituals, while the subtle veining of the tiles around the bath area is about as patterned as Ellen was willing to go in this soft and subtle apartment.
What Ellen has done so cleverly in this space is to use texture rather than color to breathe character into the apartment. She has played with finishes like lime wash to soften hard, straight lines and has been sensitive to how the owner was feeling about what she already owned – understanding that familiarity is what makes a space feel like home. Above all, she has kept surfaces clear but not empty, allowing hints of personality and personal touches – but not getting in the way of all that light, space, and air.
