A lot has been said recently about the lack of interior photography with a nighttime setting. Every home tour you’re seeing — whether on IG or in the media — looks to be shot at about 2 p.m. on the finest spring day. And I get why. But this is something we’re just not super into at Schmatta. I want to see your pad when the trees are bare and the weather channel is saying the rain will be torrential. And yeah, why can’t we see you posing in your designer kitchen in February at 6 p.m.?

Anyhow. The “home tour” is a tough nut. Most of the time, you’re getting artifice and styling, the whole thing shot a day after the install. (Most people don’t “install” their homes!) I’m way more interested in going into someone’s space that’s un-designed but still has a perspective.

I like to think our home has that feeling. I mean, it really is far from my ideal, but our aesthetic feels honest, at least. And it’s not like I’m super “proud” of my bedroom design (I mean, it has no design), but maybe there’s something you’d like to take away from it.

First, some background. My husband and I owned zero (and I mean zero) “real” furniture until 2020 — we got by with Ikea and West Elm sofas from Craigslist mixed with the occasional vintage rug or decor find. Then, in 2019, I had a miscarriage and this weird thing happened; all of a sudden, I needed to redecorate our home. In a blind bout of furniture fury, I cashed in some $20k in company stock and went ham on new things, buying multiple couches and nightstands and returning things over and over until something felt right. It took me months to realize that I did this out of grief, like a reverse-nesting thing. Anyhow, most everything in our bedroom is “new” stuff from the miscarriage era, and, as a result, it does feel a little on the nose for 2024.

We have a Blu Dot bed. It’s very beige (which these days means boring), but it’s an easy piece to adapt. I like to think when I win the lottery, I’d still keep the bed to put in my least favorite guest bedroom. The sheets (from The Six Bells) are new and a bit out of character for me. They’re very cottagecore-y but I’m just going with it.

That lamp on my nightstand is from Loftie. I’ve been using it for some two months and it’s really awesome (and I am not just saying that because they sponsored this post). You can control the color/brightness of the base with an app. And there’s all sorts of groovy effects like vibey hues (purple for sexy times, light pink if you are an influencer, and neon green if you’re in de clurb), color gradients, and seasonal palettes (v. much enjoying “Fireplace”). But my favorite setting is good old “Night” with an LED red light that puts me to sleep with the light on. (This never happens.)

In this corner below, you can see we have a matching set (nightstands and dresser) from Leanne Ford’s collection for Crate & Barrel. It’s cute. But I can’t recommend the dresser because the drawers are so shallow and tiny, which pretty much every review complained about. And now here I am four years later, begrudgingly rolling all my T-shirts because you can only get about four shirts normally folded and stacked in one drawer.

The wicker chair is the only vintage piece of furniture in the room, and fun fact: It is haunted. At random times it will creak as though someone has just sat in it. And then shortly after, it’ll freaking reverse-creak. It did it in our old home. It does it in this home. The sitting ghost will follow us for life.

Here are the same books I’ve been reading for the past 20 months. “Reading.”

On this side of the bedroom we have a little built-in, which, when we moved in, I wanted to make cane doors for. Thank goodness that phase passed!

And here you can see the items on our purely decorative bookcase, most important of which is the extremely shitty oil painting we found at the Rose Bowl Flea a few years ago. We have named this dog Gene and nobody knows why he is posing so sexily.

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Down below is a very expensive piece of woven art which is almost never discernible except for during the hours of 12 p.m.-4 p.m.

Here, I put on my flash so you can kind of see it…

And here we have a wall of craftsman windows. In fact, 3/4 of our bedroom walls are windows. 14 of them! 14 is too many windows! It’s freezing in here in winter. Outside is our little patio space that we never, ever use. (Will pay good money if you can help me figure out what to do with it so that we will use it.)

Below is a bench that is ordinarily home to about five pairs of pants and twenty T-shirts.

Eh, fuck it:

Thus concludes my nighttime bedroom tour. My hope is to turn this into a series (“Decor After Dark”) where I feature your homes — at night — with mediocre iPhone photography. Get in touch if you have a cool space that’s even cooler after dark.

Want to WIN a Loftie lamp? Easy. Like this post and leave a comment. A winner will be chosen on December 13th. You must be a Schmatta subscriber to win.

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Schmatta is written by Leonora Epstein, a former shelter pub editor-in-chief. Follow at @_leonoraepstein. For consulting and collab requests, please visit my website.

Today, a tour: a preserved mid-century in Portland that was also featured on the Hulu show, Shrill. Thanks to Arlyn Hernandez and Sonia Oñate-Rickett for their contributions.

Tour: ‘The Home of Tomorrow’ in Portland, Oregon

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