Natalie Wong’s Hollywood Regency Home Serves 'Champagne Lifestyle on a Beer Budget' in Los Angeles

Like a starlet-to-be who stumbles into a talent scout, Natalie Wong was just doing her thing when the DIY-out-loud life came for her. “I work in operations for a global entertainment and media company,” she explains. "My role is very task-oriented and I work with engineers and developers; my background actually is marketing and event production.”

Her two-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles’s Koreatown was constructed more than 90 years ago, when the city was in the process of an aesthetic shift. “The building was built in the mid-1930s and it’s French Normandy style,” Natalie says. “With Hollywood Regency kind of starting in the ‘30s, I completely pivoted and decided to go [with] Hollywood Regency [decor]. I wanted to recapture that old Hollywood retro glam style, especially since it was built in that era. I just totally am into that whole historic side of things.” Read on to see how she transformed her spaces — and how they turned her into “an accidental content creator.”

“This is the love-at first-sight room,” Natalie says. “I stepped into this space and immediately knew I needed to live here: The 10-foot ceilings, the original crown molding, the original hardwood floors, this fireplace mantel is original! Just these little architectural elements that you don’t find in new spaces.”

The fact that Natalie casts an extremely wide net for her vintage treasures means that her apartment features decor from all over the world — and that she sometimes has to pay a premium to bring it home. “[This] chandelier was actually an eBay find, so I think shipping it was more than the actual chandelier,” she says.

Natalie layers the wall art throughout her home by intermingling paintings, prints and black-and-white photographs like this one, Peter Ruck’s 1968 portrait of Roger Moore, who would become James Bond in movie palaces around the world five years later.