apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

The color combination of the rentrée appears to be black and navy -- if these photo spreads from Habitat (above) and, below, the Conran Shop's fall catalogs have anything to say about it...

James Plant is a 22-year-old recent graduate from Buckinghamshire New University and an award-winning new designer at this year's 100% Design show in London. His Private Dining is a fold-up dining room "inspired by pop-up books" that's a mere 17 cm deep...

One of the exhibitors in the upcoming 100% Design show in London is Athens-based design trio Greece Is For Lovers. Its irreverent products are inspired by its home country's cultural clichés and monuments, from opa-shouting Greek dancing to broken plates to the beach to Zeus' lightning bolt and Hermes and Aphrodite. This cedar-scented break-up candle offers "instant redemption," they instruct. "Fill in with the appropriate x-lover's name and burn the blues away." (You have 45 hours to get over your ex while it burns.) More sassy objects for the home after the jump...

Just when you thought you were sick of decorative letters come these chunky, three-dimensional aluminum letter-shaped side tables from Andrew Martin...

Dropping church attendance and an embarrassment of historic buildings mean that chapel and church conversions are a booming market in the U.K. The BBC series Britain's Dream Homes ran a program looking at a range of deconsecrated churches from London to Scotland...

Anyone who has ever visited a chateau has probably been met with the fleeting sentiment that they could move right in, possibly followed by the crushing reality of their walk-up apartment. But Colette spotted a design detail on an outing to a chateau in Normandy, and rushed right back to Paris to recreate a similar effect in her Paris apartment...

Name: Ruth
Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Rent or own: Rent
Size: 700 sq/ft including mezzanine

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Ruth was standing on a street corner in Manhattan several years ago when it hit her that she'd rather be in Amsterdam. So she left New York behind and moved herself to Amsterdam, finally settling in a charming two-level top-floor apartment in a former 14th-century women's cloister. What is now a rent-controlled, women-only residence is located off a busy street in the center of Amsterdam. You actually walk down to medieval street level to enter the beautifully landscaped grounds. But it's quite a steep climb to Ruth's top floor apartment...

There are plenty of bold ideas at the Andrew Martin showroom in London, including the lighthearted use of flag motifs from both sides of the Atlantic to wake up classic furniture, like the Union Jack and Stars and Stripes-splashed classic leather Chesterfield sofas below...

France is dominated by old stone houses, but in the last several years, building wooden houses has become a major trend, with books and magazines devoted to the subject. Many French builders look to North America for inspiration on building wooden homes, but two brothers in the South of France have built a business creating tropical-style houses on the Cap-Ferret shore...

Name: Danielle & Erik
Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Rent or own: Own
Size: 700 sq/ft
Years lived in: 2

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There are no curtains on the enormous windows at Danielle and Erik's canal-front Amsterdam flat, where boats float by day and night, taking turns with swans...

Need an inexpensive hostess gift for a friend's summer place? Philippe Starck designed the Dr. Skud flyswatter in the 1990s, but it hasn't lost its appeal, especially in the height of fly season...

One of the luxurious problems of living in an old building in Paris is sometimes being faced with a non-working marble fireplace. These often go neglected, or end up as messy storage for clutter or a station for the TV...

This solid wood and brushed stainless steel bed and matching bedside table from German architect and designer Philipp Mainzer manages to be rustic and chic at the same time...

This miniature bedroom is lifted from the mundane by a pretty turn-of-the-last-century bed and a clever window (the effect of which could be replicated with a light box)...