Sunken treasure
Conversation pits, an architectural feature popular in the ’50s and ’60s, are seeing a comeback as people crave an intimate space that encourages face-to-face connection
Betcha Dela CruzAtabug didn’t want the usual living room. ■ She wanted a place that could spark deep conversations between friends, somewhere that could serve as the ideal listening den for her husband’s vinyl collection, somewhere free of screens and the ails of modern life. So when she saw the sunken living room of her current home while she was house hunting in 2019, she knew it was just right.
Inspired in part by the 1960s-era interiors of the show “Mad Men,” Dela Cruz-Atabug turned her living room into a conversation pit. With the help of her husband and son, she took out a wooden railing that encircled the space (“It looked like a crib,” she said), stained the wooden surround a darker color and added burnt-orange cushions. It cost her around $500.
“This is where we come together and bond. We read, listen to music and drink coffee and wine. There’s no TV to talk over. We feel like we’re connecting more here,” said Dela Cruz-Atabug, 46, who manages a law firm in Diamond Bar, in Los Angeles County.
A conversation pit is an architectural feature that typically has cushioned, built-in seating and is constructed below floor level. They were popular in the United States throughout the mid-20th century, in part because architects and designers saw them as a way to avoid the clutter of furniture. The pit wasn’t limited by geography or site — it could be found carved into a New York City airport, or in a home in Indiana.
They often functioned as indoor playgrounds for adults, sometimes the place for drunken antics. And yet, they evoked chicness, and elegance. Below ground, they were elevated.
Today, conversation pits are making a resurgence. With feelings of isolation exacerbated by a yearslong pandemic and the omnipresent digital screens of working from home, many people view conversation pits as the ultimate symbol of intimacy and a step back toward a simpler time. While some homeowners are going all out and constructing conversation pits, for renters or people who simply don’t have the resources to transform their living rooms, social media has become a place to moon over them, allowing people to vicariously sit in them by way of Instagram and Twitter feeds.
“It feels more intimate. But, most importantly, I love that it encourages conversation and good old-fashioned, face-to-face conversation. We all can use a little more of that, especially in our always-online, always-on-our-phones culture,” said Erika Mackley, 31, an art director in Detroit.
The architectural feature has been an object of fascination for Mackley for months. “Bring back conversation pits,” she shared a post on Twitter in April, with photos of several elaborate conversation pits she saw on Pinterest. She wants to have one of her own, but her current apartment is too small, she
holding, she’ll go plant shopping with them or even do a full installation.
She’ll also diagnose what might be wrong with plants a client already has. Plants purchased at the beginning of the pandemic that have begun to develop yellowing or browning leaves may simply need a little more room to grow, Greene said. She can talk clients through repotting or do it for them.
For a 45- to 60-minute plant-styling consultation, Greene charges $200 to $300, based on a clients’ ability to pay and the size of the space.
Feng shui consultant
You may be curious about feng shui, the ancient Chinese practice of using design to enhance health and prosperity. Or maybe you just feel that things in your apartment, and perhaps in your life, are out of whack. Feng shui practitioners such as Judith Wendell, founder of Sacred Currents, a New York-based consulting firm, may be able to help.
Wendell talks clients through feng shui’s five elements and the bagua —a template that divides a room into nine zones and helps guide the placement of furnishings — as she makes recommendations for a space, taking into consideration a customer’s health, relationships and goals. She can recommend the most propitious place for a home office — or a litter box.
Although she always did her work in person prepandemic, now a large number of her jobs are remote consultations, which can be both effective and efficient, she said. “I have someone’s floor plan and we have photos. We work on Zoom,” Wendell added.
And with all the moving that people have been doing lately, she’s been called on to conduct “clearings,” which rid a house or apartment of the prior occupant’s energies, and blessing rituals, to usher in a client’s new life in the space.
Sessions with Wendell start at $675, and she charges $180 an hour for a virtual consultation, with a two-hour minimum.
Environmental psychologist
Imagine you could paint your home office a color that could spur you to think more creatively during work hours, or arrange furniture so that everyone in the family could get along better. Or design rooms to support someone in your household who has ADHD or is on the autism spectrum.
An environmental psychologist such as Sally Augustin can offer advice on all of the above. Augustin, co-founder of the firm The Space Doctors, has pored over scientific studies to understand how sensory stimuli affect our performance and mood.
Working from her home in Chicago, Augustin examines clients’ floor plans and room photos and takes into consideration their personalities and goals. Then she advises how to “fine tune the physical environment to make the outcomes they want more likely.”
For those who want to stimulate creativity when they work, for instance, she might recommend pale sage green for the walls of a home office and the scent of cinnamon vanilla — both of which have been shown to enhance creative thinking, Augustin said.
For consultations, she charges $50 to $125 per room, and $175 per hour for those with special needs.
Hanging art
One reason art installation firms began to rebound after the initial lockdown: Zoom meetings. “Clients were focused on their walls and what they look like and whatever was behind them in a Zoom call,” said David
Kassel, owner of I Level, which is based in New York.
Clients often contact I Level seeking help grouping artworks or framed photos on a wall, either in a grid or a free-form, salon-style arrangement, Kassel said.
“They want all these disparate things to look good together,” he said, but they are intimidated by the idea of tackling the job themselves.
There have been unusual requests, too, such as from the young couple who wanted a painting hung on the ceiling over their bed — while they were snuggled below, under the sheets.
The firm charges $295 per art handler for two hours of work, then $95 for each additional hour.
Aromatherapy for a home
For years, hotels and spas have commissioned signature scents. Now homeowners can do the same.
These fragrances go beyond simply smelling good, said Yael Alkalay, founder and CEO of Red Flower, a company based in New York that makes personal care and home products from potent botanical extracts and other ingredients derived from plants. The company believes the natural scents of its products
can boost your mood and help you work and sleep better.
Rather than an overall fragrance that blankets the whole house or apartment, however, Alkalay recommends localized scents, geared to and supporting what takes place in various rooms, used in conjunction with Red Flower’s readymade products. For a home office, she might develop an oil that could be rubbed into the wood desk a client works at.
“We could create a combination of cedarwood, lemon balm, frankincense and maybe even a little citrus, like grapefruit essential oil — it’s so awakening,” she said.
Switching scents, just like dimming or brightening lights, can also help change the mood when rooms must do double-duty, as is often the case these days. For a client who uses the same space for doing work and practicing yoga, Alkalay helped develop a ritual that involves misting the space after the workday is done and dabbing yoga towels with an oil that incorporates orange and quince.
A consultation with the firm starts at $500, and prices vary depending on the type and quantity of ingredients and techniques used.
Decluttering
Professional organizers promise to turn a disorderly home into an orderly one. But hire one and your place might momentarily look worse before it starts to look better.
The organizers from Horderly, which is based in New York, start each project by pulling everything out of cabinets and closets. They ask clients about whether items are used and, if they are, how often. Dispensable stuff is tossed or set aside for donation, and items that are used frequently are put back in the easiest-to-reach places.
Often the process involves purchasing products such as bins and baskets. And Fillip Hord, who founded the firm with his wife, Jamie Hord, said his staff is not fazed by what they might be asked to put in those containers — they’ve organized sex toys and created “weed boxes” for cannabis paraphernalia.
Most of Horderly’s clients are space-starved city apartment dwellers. But over the pandemic, the firm has worked with more customers who live in houses.
Having more space sometimes means accumulating more stuff.
“A lot of times, people
just throw things in the basement or garage,” Hord said. “In those spaces, we’re setting up systems. It starts out as a junk room, and we hone it into an organized junk room.”
Depending on the location and number of hours billed, Horderly charges $85 to $150 per hour per organizer.
Helping with big moves
An older couple downsizing from a townhouse to an apartment. A client who must pack up the contents of a home in advance of a gut renovation. A death in the family necessitating the clearing out of a lifetime’s worth of a loved one’s possessions.
Seriatim, a New Yorkbased organizing company, specializes in helping clients deal with belongings during such life-changing events.
“Our client is crisisdriven,” said Sonya Weisshappel, founder and CEO. She and her team will sort items, inventory them, pack up and distribute to relatives, donate and prepare for sale at auction. The firm charges $1,450 for an eighthour day with one team member.