CONSULTANTS CAN PROVIDE VARIETY OF EXPERTISE FOR A SPACE THAT FEELS STALE
Professionals can advise on paint color, scents, feng shui
The paFndemic triggered all sorts of upheavals in residential real estate. But whether we stayed in our apartments or left the city for the suburbs or second homes — and maybe have since returned — we are still spending much more time in our homes.
With each move and rejiggering of space, there have been possessions to cast a critical eye on (keep? discard? put in storage?), not to mention furniture to arrange, art to hang and other design-related tasks. Some talented souls, blessed with visual and organizational skills, do it all themselves. Others, blessed with ample income, may turn to consultants for help.
Many such experts saw their businesses plummet during early lockdowns — and then boom as people stuck at home focused on their immediate surroundings. Some have adjusted to the times by introducing or ramping up remote consultations. Here, a look at some assorted consultants and what they charge — from decluttering experts to professionals who can
you choose paint colors for your walls, houseplants and signature scents for your rooms.
All charges are approximate and subject to change.
Houseplant whisperer
Houseplants were increasing in popularity even before the coronavirus arrived, but the pandemic has spurred even more interest. Not everyone, though, has a green thumb.
Enter plant consultants such as Maryah Greene, who runs the
one-woman New York firm Greene Piece. Greene will walk into a new client’s apartment “with 200 plants in my head,” she said. But as she gets to know the client and the space (amount of sunlight, the presence of pets or young children, for instance) she starts narrowing things down.
After each consultation, she provides a guide with plant recommendations and advice on care.
If someone needs more handhelp
said. “If I had a home, I would definitely explore it within that space.”
A fantasy of togetherness
For many people, conversation pits are unattainable. A New Yorker cannot carve a pit into a studio apartment on the fourth floor of a walk-up. Some people can only experience the design wonders virtually, such as by constructing them on video games like Sims or posting about them on social media. Rock Herzog, an interior designer in Los Angeles who runs the Twitter account @CocaineDecor, said that the conversation pit is the perfect metaphor for the milieu of the times.
“Not only are we physically separated from one another, we are culturally, socially and politically separated from each other, and the end to that separateness is not in sight,” Herzog, 38, said. “So the conversation pit is this fantasy of ‘What would it be like if we were together again and having a good time?’ ”
Reeves Connelly, a 25-year-old in Brooklyn, N.Y., who has a popular interior design TikTok account, said that the posts he’s made about conversation pits always get the most engagement.
“Every single video I would do about conversation pits would always start a discussion. A lot of people have very strong opinions on both sides, whether they want them to come back or not,” Connelly said. “I think the pandemic made people more interested in how homes look. With Zoom meetings and everyone making social media posts from their bedrooms or living rooms, something that was private before is now totally public.”
The playfulness and whimsy of conversation pits is what drew Anna Stapor to them. In 2020, she started an Instagram account dedicated to them, posting photos of historical conversation pits as well as modern ones.
“There’s something to be said about sitting on a lower level, basically on the floor, and feeling more grounded and more engaged with other people around you,” said Stapor, a 25-year-old designer in Brooklyn.
What’s stopping her from getting one right now? “Space and money,” she said. “In a way, I use my Instagram as a way to dream and look at spaces I hope to have one day.”
The peak of the pit
One of the most well-known conversation pits of the 20th century is in the Miller House, a private residence for architecture patrons J. Irwin Miller and Xenia Miller in Columbus, Ind., completed in 1957.
The pit is glorious — it features five steps down into a sea of carpeting and pillows, and the slipcovers were swapped out depending on the season. The interior of the home was designed by Alexander Girard, “the perfecter of the conversation pit form,” said Deborah Lubera Kawsky, an art historian and author of “Alexander Girard, Architect: Creating Midcentury Modern Masterpieces.”
Because Girard was director of design for Herman Miller’s textile division, but also trained as an architect, he had an “expansive conception of interior design, one that was inextricably linked with the architecture,” said Kawsky.
In 1962, a giant, red conversation pit was unveiled at New York’s TWA Flight Center at John F. Kennedy International Airport, then known as Idlewild airport, designed by Eero Saarinen, who was also an architect on the Miller House. The public, shared setting for this conversation pit helped spread the idea to the masses, Kawsky said. The flight center, including the conversation pit, was restored and reborn as TWA Hotel in 2019.
In a 1975 interview with The New York Times, Ward Bennett, a designer, said that he viewed conversation pits and other builtins as “attempts to eliminate furniture.” Bennett, who helped popularize the pit, said, “I want to limit, to simplify.”
Many early sketches of conversation pits also featured images of lit cigarettes and martinis, Kawsky noted. “Entertaining was very important at the time. Designers were trying to show how these architectural forms could enhance that,” she said.
But eventually, the pit lost its sleek and sexy image.
For one, some people started to realize that it could be dangerous. As a 1963 TIME article put it, “At cocktail parties, latestaying guests tended to fall in. Those in the pit found themselves bombarded with bits of hors d’oeuvres from up above, looked out on a field of trouser cuffs, ankles and shoes. Ladies shied away from the edges, fearing up-skirt exposure.”
The rise of the television was another factor. Television sets became mainstream fixtures in American homes by the latter half of the 20th-century, and living rooms started being built around them, quickly making obsolete the conversation pit and its purpose.
“The pendulum swings on these architectural styles, and people eventually want to follow the new styles. As the conversation pit started being associated with a bygone era, people let it go,” Kawsky said.
‘Like a huge playpen’
For those who aren’t fans of 1900s decor, today’s conversation pits have been modernized — they’re often without shag carpets, have minimalist color schemes and can even be found outdoors.
Kristin Korven and Jeff Kaplon of Part
Office, a design studio, created an all-white conversation pit in 2019 for the Los Angeles home of Geraldine Chung, who owns a fashion boutique. The initial design decision, Korven said, came about because the space itself was small, and they wanted to make it feel like it had more volume.
Chung had been “obsessed” with conversation pits for years, she said, and when she learned it would be too difficult to raise the ceiling in her living room to make it more spacious, it was the ideal excuse to install a conversation pit.
“I thought, ‘If we can’t go up, let’s go down,’ ” said Chung, 45.
The cushions upholstered in Belgian linen, wool carpeting and exotic marble of the built-in side table were all carefully chosen to make the space a textural, sensory experience, and so as not to appear kitschy, Korven said.
“It’s just so nice having a living room where you’re not praying to the altar of a giant LCD screen,” Chung said.
It’s also incredibly playful: She’s joked about filling it with balls to turn into a ball pit, and when her friends’ children come over, they throw all the pillows into the middle of the pit and dive into it. All that fun does come with safety concerns though, Chung noted.
“You could throw an elbow and someone would fall in. When I have Christmas at my house and my grandmother and older aunts and uncles are over, I usually put benches or things along the edge,” she said.
Outdoor conversation pits have also started to take off as a more modern take on the trend. Conversation pits in swimming pools have been “increasing in popularity especially for waterfront properties where sightlines across infinity edge pools provide the effect of sitting in the water,” said Bryan Sereny, an agent with Douglas Elliman in Miami Beach. Last year, Sereny sold a $30 million waterfront estate that had a pool with a sunken conversation and dining pit — “a very desirable feature for the buyer,” he said.
Through the 1960s and ’70s, Sarah Dwelley grew up in a home with a conversation pit in New Canaan, Conn. The house was designed by her father, James Evans, and the pit was around 11 by 11 feet, with shag carpeting and about 2 feet below floor level, Dwelley, 68, recalled.
“Mostly, it was used when we had parties. My mom and dad loved to throw parties. People would sit on the edge of it with their feet dangling into the pit or get right down into it,” said Dwelley, who now lives in Camden, Maine. “If people put their drinks down at floor level, one of our dogs would come around and drink their drinks.”
Dwelley spent time relaxing and doing homework in the pit, and it was also at times a playground. “When my brother just learned to walk — he was probably around 1 — we put him in the pit and he could run around and be safe. It was like a huge playpen,” she said.
After her family sold the house, the pit was covered over with flooring. Earlier this month, it went back on the market for $2.1 million, and potential buyers have expressed interest in restoring the pit, the property’s listing agent, John Engel, said.
“One of my clients said, ‘I want to buy this house and definitely want to restore the conversation pit,’ ” Engel said. “Originality has become important as the value of these houses has risen, and the conversation pit is just one component of that.”
“There’s something to be said about sitting on a lower level, basically on the f loor, and feeling more grounded and more engaged with other people around you.” Anna Stapor • designer and Instagrammer