“Anything with a lid makes me want to have a nervous breakdown, it’s so cozy.”
—NATHAN TURNER
WHILE RESEARCHING THIS book, I took a trip to San Francisco. Besides climbing the steep hills and eating wedges of sourdough bread, I went on a tour of the infamous prison that sits on an island in the bay; renowned for some of the murderous inmates it housed, it is now a national park. Alcatraz is stunningly beautiful, which is a little bizarre because you can’t help but look out from the jail and think, This is a way better view than I have in my hotel—by far. But, of course, crime and punishment was a misery, and that reality doesn’t leave you while you are there.
It felt eerie to be tourists in our modern sneakers and backpacks, listening to Patrick Mahoney, a real prison guard, narrate the audio guide. Maybe it was because of that feeling that I really appreciated learning that if the inmates living on “The Rock” had good behavior for long enough, they were allowed to keep the carefully collected and arranged possessions they had on a little shelf. There were drawings (many of their own creation) and postcards on the walls. Some learned to crochet; others had a few books. While I walked through the chilly corridors, passing cell after five-by-eleven-foot cell, I thought how impossibly difficult it must have been to keep hope alive when you were imprisoned on Alcatraz. How did they do it? Faith? Visitors? A daily exchange with a guard? Meals? Was there no hope? But the small decorative attempts I saw were evidence of optimism and courage.
If we are lucky, we have the freedom and the ability to express it. We are lucky if we have a home to build collections, pin up postcards, and paint walls whatever colors we choose. Even the choice of where to put a single chair can empower and have impact on our daily happiness. I don’t even like decorating so much, but I do like noticing what parts of the apartment my family gravitates to and then enhancing those natural gathering spots with paintings of birds on the walls or a place to rest one’s feet, and I certainly love a chintz.
My oldest son is a heat-seeker. As a small child, he would find the hot water pipe or heater in any of the numerous places we lived (his father is a professor and we moved around a lot). He would wedge his reedy four-year-old body next to a piece of furniture near the heat source, and wrap himself around the hot-ish pipe like a little sloth. Eventually, after I was remarried, our family settled permanently, and as night follows day, Hugh found his way to the portly prewar accordion radiator in the living room. The only thing that seemed logical for me to do, so he wasn’t always on the floor, was build a cozy nook for him there.
We pushed a wide ottoman into the corner between the radiator and a side table with a lamp and the window—plenty of natural and incandescent light. I gave him a large, sturdy pillow with an owl on it so he could sit up and lean against the wall to read or be on a computer. For years, he practically lived in that spot with his socked feet rammed up against the furnace. He always said it was cozy. Watching him there, giving him that space to be at home, made me feel cozy too.
Our spaces are a blank canvas for us to express our personal experience and identity. This is where you have to put on your thinking cap and open your eyes. What are you interested in? What do you love? Who do you love? Where are you from? I live in New York City. Once, at a flea market, I spotted four ratty, inexpensive prints of apples. I thought to myself, If I frame those and put them in my kitchen, every time I look at them I will know that I’m a New York girl. I did frame those prints, and I swear that every time I look at them I know who I am. But I’m no designer. Nora Ephron wrote in her movie When Harry Met Sally, “Everyone thinks they have good taste and a sense of humor but they couldn’t possibly all have good taste.” I don’t think I have good taste, or a particularly good sense of humor, and that’s okay. I know a few things.
If I had to choose one design move to make a room cozy, it would be lamps. Having light distributed all over a room in individual pools gives people choices of where to settle in. Well-placed lamps next to chairs for reading and on tables in dim corners is my cozy go-to. It’s not just the warm light, helping you see better—it’s turning them all on and off. There is a moment of solitude, which can feel dark when one sits down to work—but if there is a lamp, in a single, thoughtful gesture you can turn a switch, hear the pleasing click, and everything you need to do is illuminated. My body relaxes when the desk lamp turns on, even if I’m looking at a pile of bills.
I have a hard time choosing the right colors—I know I love yellow in a room, but there are so many yellows, it’s overwhelming. I also don’t have an eye for space. An architect was over for dinner, and she said, “You know, if you turn this table around and push it two feet over so it hits the wall, this area will work for you, not against you.” I had no idea what she meant (isn’t space just, well, space?!), but I immediately followed her free, sage advice and in two shakes of a lamb’s tail turned a space where nobody had ever felt good—or hung out—into one of the coziest spaces in our apartment. Perhaps because the table is against a wall now, we feel more grounded. The room looks and feels comprehensive.
There are people who are born with an innate feel for where objects should go and where drawings should be hung, and have the same instinct about color as migrating birds who know where to fly—they just know. Having an eye and sense of place is like having a beautiful voice or being a fast runner; it’s God given. Some make it their profession; some don’t.
Because it’s such a wide subject, I’m going to ask people I think have a knack for decorating and design to put in their two cents about what they find cozy. My editor would love me to work all of these words of wisdom into an all-inclusive chapter, but I am going to stick to my guns here and just quote these designers, as one of my cozy rules is, if you don’t know what you are doing, ask a professional and do what they say. Seeking the wisdom of smarter and talented people has helped me. My father calls something like this “tips from the top.”
COZY DESIGN TIPS
Linda, my mother (not a designer, but I generally do what she says):
Small dining tables—round (ours is forty-three inches in diameter, best for two to four people, can fit six)
Small dining tables—rectangular (ours is seventy-five by thirty-three, best for four to six people, can fit ten)
Pillows of just about any size or shape—down, if possible
Bookcases—in just about every room
Surfaces—not hard (as in marble, tile)
Stools and small chairs—Have a small chair in your house or apartment. Any four-year-old who comes to visit will make a beeline straight to it and sit happily, feeling paid attention to while the grown-ups do what they do. And stools. Wonderful to have something to put one’s feet on.
Kitchens—not too big
Nathan Turner
NATHAN TURNER IS an entertaining design and food virtuoso. He’s written beautiful books and owns a shop in California that has a full kitchen right in it so he can entertain! Here is an example of a childhood feeling and formative emotional attachment informing not only Nathan’s personal aesthetic but the way he works.
“The color blue. To me the coziest blue is a deep navy blue that you see in Northern California and Maine. The house I grew up in looked out on a strait that came out of the ocean; it curved and bent. And that color blue—it wasn’t that you wanted to jump in it, you wanted to get into a good chair and look at it. And then every night the fog would roll in like a blanket and that meant it was time to go to sleep. Those colors of dark blues, grays, and greens, because of the rolling hills, trigger childhood for me. If color scares you, open the closet and see what the dominant color is, and then go for that. If you are too scared to paint an entire room, just paint the ceiling. Imperfection is cozy. The experience of a room or a dinner party is what you are going for—it’s not about creating perfection, that’s not the point. People are the point. It’s about trying to make people feel good, that’s what’s cozy.”
Eric Hughes
FUN FACT: not only is Eric a prominent designer, but he and Nathan are partners and delight in each other’s work as much as they delight in each other. Talking to them at the same time was extremely cozy, because it was fueled by so much love. Love for each other, love for design, love for architecture and spaces, love for food and entertaining, and the earnest desire to help people create all that for themselves. Ah, people in love . . .
“As far as cozy decorating and interiors, what I love is, well, we seem to be going through a moment of self-expression. Socially things don’t feel rigid. In this moment there is a certain freedom—and I would venture coziness—in self-expression. How that expresses itself in the home is interesting. There seems to be a genuine appreciation for the handmade, for the odd, for that thing that speaks to you one on one—not mass. And outlets like Etsy and eBay, and in a way Instagram, have really captured that feeling and led the way to a new crafts boom. Who knew thousands of folks whittled handmade wooden spoons? I love wooden spoons—now they are everywhere! Gorgeous pottery—EVERYWHERE!! Macramé—EVERYWHERE. Gorgeous textiles—EVERYWHERE! My point being, this allows us all to bring these moments into our home, these moments of self-expression, these moments of joy—and these moments are cozy and create, especially with time, a cozy home. Through Nathan I’ve learned there is coziness in organized chaos, in life and in decorating. My interiors used to be highly organized—you might not have thought them particularly cozy . . . over time I’ve softened my approach and coziness is now a priority. Does love make you a cozier person? In my case, the answer is yes.”
Miles Redd
I ALMOST FEEL this is a present for anyone reading. I met and became best friends with Miles Redd in college. He has now, among other things, been named to Architectural Digest’s AD 100, a list of “the world’s preeminent architects and designers.” His massive talent and kindness is clear the second you lay eyes on him; he exudes warmth and style.
- A huge cozy thing is STRAW, and it comes in a multitude of forms but can do so much in its humble way. It can take the edge off grand, it can give you a fresh-and-sun-swept feel, it can be a basket full of logs next to a roaring fire in the country, but it always works and always looks wonderful. Here are some useful ways. On the floor, best way to make a grand English country house feel like you can kick your feet up—I love it wall to wall, but straw area rugs are great too. A straw hat casually tossed on a hook can do a great deal for disguising messy coats usually hanging there as well. Straw wastepaper basket, straw pencil cups, straw chairs . . . use them, paint them (painted straw is wonderful), but it is one of the great decorating tools, and it is usually cheap.
- Trays are essential, and I use them everywhere. They can take a jumble of junk and make it look contained and organized. Just try it. Put a stack of papers in a tray. Voilà—instant organization, but useful in bathrooms to contain the products, wonderful on bars, housing the mixers, in kitchens with oils and vinegars and pepper mills, and of course on desks . . .
- Pencil cups and paper. I like them tucked in areas, because aren’t we always looking for a paper and pen to jot something down? Bedside tables, next to phones, in kitchens, etc. But get creative with the vessel and the paper and the pen. Nothing uglier than a chipped mug full of chewed-off pens. Silver cups with just black flair tips are what I favor, but horn cups with number-two pencils are also good. Pads of paper that say DON’T FORGET is a notion borrowed from Albert Hadley, but one I encourage you to steal.
- Dimmers are also the key to cozy. Lighting, in fact, is essential. Lots of sources of light . . . lamps, task, picture light, all on about thirty-watt bulbs, will make your house glow like a pumpkin at Halloween.
- Bars—instant cozy. Set a drinks table up in your living room, put a tray, ice bucket, bottle of liquor, a small cutting board—and it immediately makes a space inviting.
Vanessa Gillespie
A JEWELRY DESIGNER by trade, Vanessa taught me about the coziness of working at home while we lived together in the West Village almost twenty-five years ago. She would sit at a little work desk with her tools, and carve wax for rings. Vanessa often had a hand-painted Italian ceramic cup of cappuccino—half-caffeinated, half-decaf—that she brewed herself in our closet-sized kitchen. The kitchen, next door to her jewelry-making corner, could fit barely two people in it at one time but had a window that looked at the clock tower of the Jefferson Market Library.
Ness’s advice: “If possible, try to have a blanket in every room.”
With the advent of the light, versatile, inexpensive, almost mystical microfiber, snug blankets tucked away in any corner is a real possibility.
Katie Brown
WHEN I FIRST got to know Katie—really know her, not just as a lifestyle expert from her books and television shows—she made me these very simple, perfectly weighted, soft, delicious bran muffins. In fact, she kept the batter on hand in her refrigerator so she could make fresh ones for her family or guests at the drop of a hat. Her recipe is in the back of the book. Katie feels like her name, bright and down-to-earth, and she is CO-ZY. Here’s why:
“The thing that I think makes my home the coziest is my attempt to have everything right there, wherever people sit, wherever people sleep, wherever people eat. I want friends and family who come into my home to feel settled and at ease. So I sleep in all bedrooms, I sit in all the chairs and couches and daydream in every nook and cranny. I eat on every table and look out every window so that I can anticipate what people might want when they settle in. The result, I hope, is when you are hungry you grab a snack from the glass canisters I fill for all to see and dig into on my kitchen counter. If you are tired and sleep in our guest bedroom, you have not one, not two, but three pillows on that bed of varying firmness so you can pick the one that helps you sleep the night away. Want to read a book? Go right ahead because whatever seat you pick will have a light at just the right height for your reading enjoyment. You would like a tea while you read? Not an issue, because there will be a table just close enough for you to rest your beverage on. I want the people I love to want for nothing at any time or any place in my house, because to me that is COZY!”
