Law School Quarters 500 sq. ft.

Graduate student housing often comes furnished (yay! less things to buy), but even the highest quality stuff (to last generations of students) can feel cold and sterile (what you might imagine at a chain hotel). 

We worked on a couple of big themes: warming the room up (color-temperature wise; Palo Alto is hot enough in the summer), and segmenting a large living space into meaningful zones (study vs sleep vs play vs cook). 

The lamps that came with the place gave off a distinctly hotel-y vibe (high quality, but dated, and impersonal). They were immediately put into a closet (only ever to be seen again during move-out), and replaced with other light fixtures (a standing IKEA traffic light tree lamp, which met a sorry hot end in Corner Sky Unit 700 sq. ft., and a Pixar lamp that we eventually put back into the college furnishing circuit -- more below). 

Departing business school students (have the finest things out of all the grad students, gosh, and) donated us a bunch of orange / yellow / red possessions (geometric yellow chair, orange / quilted euro sham, red patterned persian rug), which really goes to show it is good to know people. 

I also found a wall decal on eBay (today I'm getting strong asian dessert cafe vibes, but before this I thought it was cute), a gold paint speckled lampshade (not in pictures, but that has since been repurposed into a wastepaper basket) and a black and white striped rug to break up the gray carpeting (that is now, 2 years later, an outdoor rug). 

One of the greatest things about the college furnishings circuit is that items (from instant pots to cars) get passed from hand to hand to hand to hand. I'm still holding on to many of these things, and probably will for as long as I can. My instant pot has moved through 4 generations of grad students and has a half melted seal, but that's not yet a reason to replace it. People have begged me to have some dignity and replace it but no can do! That pot is an old friend you can't buy (and for students reading this today -- your college trade market is where it's at.)