There's a Bright, Airy Home Lurking Behind This Industrial Brooklyn Facade

It might not look so fancy from the outside, but through this garage in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, you’ll find a peaceful urban retreat with light streaming in through the private courtyard. We asked design team Bespoke Only, founded by Melissa Lee and Erika Chou, how they turned this former bachelor pad into an urban oasis for a young couple with a budding startup.

Built on the site of a former metal shop, this house was originally designed for Steve Burns, the former Blue's Clues host. “He bought this lot, which used to be a metal shop, and turned it into a courtyard house, which is really unique,” Melissa says. Its newest owners wanted to create a combination live/work space, with room to house their company office, an airy living room to host their employees, and private spaces for them to retreat completely from work.

When Bespoke Only took on the project, there were originally interior windows along the upstairs back wall here, offering a view from the guest bedroom into the main house. Because the new homeowners wanted to be able to entertain their coworkers in their home, they wanted to move the principal bedroom upstairs to that space. “Now those windows are gone, to give a proper separation from the rest of the house,” she says.

Melissa’s team had custom doors made for the principal bedroom closet out of frosted glass, woven cane and stained white oak. “In a tight, small space, I think having a little material that is not so solid helps to keep it airy,” she says. It also gives a nod to the original footprint of the room, Melissa says, to use translucent materials where the bedroom's interior windows used to be.