House Party: Tour This Brooklyn Creator's Pop Culture-Curated Loft

Julian Thomas, the Brooklyn-based creator of Told by Thomas, has no shame in his game of designing, personalizing and curating art for his NYC bachelor pad. And that’s mainly because his family spent years together playing armchair designer. “Growing up in the suburbs, my mom and dad would always sit and watch HGTV — [they] were the ones who inspired me to really embrace the DIY stuff," Julian recalls. "I was taught you need to make your home your home.”

Julian’s creative spirit took off with his first DIY loft project: stencil painted walls. “When I walked in [the loft] it was all white,” Julian says. “It was truly a blank canvas. So that’s where you see the stencil work that I did — all hand painting — which I’m very proud of because I’m not an artist.”

“I started off with a primer to really have a nice clean base to work with," Julian continues. "And then I just took some black paint and a somewhat dry, hard-bristle brush and took my time.” The end result creates a contemporary, black-and-white mural wall that helps to define the small space.

Julian's modern, neutral dining nook is small but packs a cozy design aesthetic, thanks to years of very particular family rules. "My mom, she’s really big on rugs," Julian says with a laugh. "It’s like rugs [are] everywhere. She invests in rugs. And I remember having so many restrictions in the house growing up — 'Don’t step on that rug!', 'Don’t go in that room with that rug!' — and once I got my own place, I [was] kind of over rugs."