Houzz Tour: Quick and Friendly Makeover for a Brooklyn Townhouse

Los Angeles interior designer Lindsay Pennington is a really good friend. One of her best friends is a busy partner in a law firm who travels for work a lot. Even though she had owned this townhouse for about five years, the friend hadn’t had the time to decorate it. “Her house didn’t have any personality. I wanted to help her make it feel as vibrant and alive as she is,” Pennington says. The designer flew to New York for a week with the intention of helping her pal design her bedroom. To help motivate herself, she scheduled a photo shoot for six days after her arrival. She was so motivated, she wound up redoing not only the bedroom but also the entire floor, including the living room, kitchen and bathroom, even doing most of the painting herself.

Photos by Peter Dressel Photography

Houzz at a Glance
Who lives here: A single woman
Location: On the border of the Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crimson Hill neighborhoods in Brooklyn, New York
Size: 1,600 square feet (149 square meters); three bedrooms, two bathrooms

Pennington’s friend and client had the basics — the sofa, the daybed and the midcentury modern console. “She is fascinated by and attracted to midcentury modern design and bright color.… She also travels to Japan, Taiwan and Singapore a lot for work and appreciates an Asian aesthetic,” the designer says. “I wanted to help her harmonize these things.”

Pennington landed in New York on a Saturday, and the two pals hit the streets to find furniture and accessories that would pull the room together. They hit a popular spot for finding unique art and vintage items, Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn.



BEFORE: The space had just the basics. “It was all still very white and builder’s-grade,” Pennington says. “She hadn’t had a chance to get it together and make it cozy.”

In an email, Pennington shared some of her favorite spots for shopping on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn:
Collier West for great artwork, pillows and accents. A wonderful shop with helpful service.Greenhouse & Co. for good vintage furniture, mostly midcentury, and eco-friendly bedding and home accessories.Jarontiques for super-hip vintage furniture and accessories — this place is a treasure trove!Bright Lyons for artwork.


AFTER: A large vintage Baker coffee table anchors the room. It’s a great size and shape to arrange the furniture around, stack books or use to serve pizza. Its reddish-brown marble top, ebony detailing and brass accents add texture and tie the room together. It also has a bit of chinoiserie style, which the homeowner loves.

Originally, Pennington was just going to help her friend and client dress up her bedroom, but a rug snafu spurred the living room and kitchen makeover. “We chose this rug online, and while it was the right size, the bedroom door wouldn’t close over it,” she says. While they could have sanded down the door, they tried it out in the living room and it was a perfect fit, which inspired the designer to tackle that room at the same time. “The rug has movement and pattern but feels neutral,” the designer says. “It also is very durable and doesn’t show soil.”

Wall paint: Gray Crest, Ralph Lauren; Modern Tri-Color rug: eSaleRugs.com


More snafus ensued — not knowing any dependable contractors on the East Coast, Pennington wound up choosing a painter who was a no-show. She and her pal hit Home Depot and hauled back all of the paint and paint supplies themselves. Since the photographer was coming in less than a week, the designer knew she’d have to get out the paintbrushes and drop cloths herself, and found a guy on Craiglist to help her paint the living room, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom.

A modern classic Serge Mouille floor lamp fills the corner, enlivening what could have been a dead space. A small marble-topped side table on a brass stand is easy to move around as an extra surface for drinks. It coordinates with the marble table lamps on the console and also provides a delicate contrast to the sturdy wood drum side table. “I love to mix materials and metallic finishes,” Pennington says. A vintage midcentury modern wall sconce provides good reading light at the end of the sofa.

Pillows on gray sofa: Collier West; pillows on red sofa: Design Within Reach and custom in La Fiorentina fabric by David Hicks; vintage teak lamp and vintage drum table: Jarontiques; coffee table: vintage Baker, Greenhouse & Co.; marble lamps: West Elm; tall floor lamp: Organic Modernism; vintage Alexander Girard poster: Bright Lyons; most other artwork: Collier West


A vintage Alexander Girard poster, right, set the tone and brought in color and the kind of graphics the homeowner was attracted to. “She loves pops of color. We took the red all the way through the kitchen and dining room,” Pennington says.

The two red side chairs are lightweight, so the homeowner can easily move them around to create extra seating when she has guests over. They add another burst of red.


Pennington created cohesion between the living room and kitchen by carrying the same gray paint all the way through and adding dashes of red via accessories. They found the vintage bar stools at local shop Horseman Antiques.

She shopped for all new glassware, china and other kitchen accessories. “Because there is limited storage and she has the open shelves, I wanted to make it relate to what was going on in the living room,” Pennington says.

Clock: CB2





“That green in the painting really inspired the color scheme in here,” the designer says. The painting was something that the pair had spied while shopping together on a previous visit, but although the homeowner loved it, she was not ready to commit at the time. The fact that it was still at the shop was fate, and they scooped it up.

The two vintage nightstands are side tables that are nice and long, with lower shelves that are handy for books and magazines. The two lamps are classics by Isamu Noguchi.

Wall paint: Quatrefoil, Ralph Lauren; table lamps: Akari lanterns, Isamu Noguchi; bedding: Coyuchi; accent pillow: Vintage Velvet Uzbek, Collier West; Vintage Lane side tables: Greenhouse & Co.


“She’s a girly girl, so I wanted to give her a place to sit and do her makeup in her bedroom,” Pennington says. When the delivery for the table she’d ordered fell through, the designer just rolled with another snafu. She “shopped” the rest of the house and found this one in her friend’s Ping-Pong room downstairs.

“There are a lot of sharp angles in here, so I used things like the vintage desk lamp and mirror, the vase and the jars to add some softness and break up the harshness of the angles,” the designer says. The jars are a contemporary take on ginger jars. “We made a few nods to the Asian aesthetic without being literal,” she says.

Armoire: Room & Board; vintage table lamp and mirror: Horseman Antiques


The bathroom’s contemporary permanent fixtures were fine; the room just needed some softness and a little Asian-style flair. Pennington used a blue-green-gray paint for the walls, which ties it to the other rooms, and new accessories like a shower curtain, minimalist toothbrush holder and teak bath mat give it a more relaxing, spa-like feel.

Wall paint (similar): Crescent Blue, Ralph Lauren

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