Living for a while · 6 min

Deep blue, and a ladder to the stars

There is a spot in this apartment where the city simply disappears. You draw the deep blue velvet curtain, and a corner becomes its own small chamber, just large enough for a bed, a pillow, a thought. The Apartment Messing keeps a secret like this. A graphic wallpaper in blue and cream runs all around, and the whole room is so quiet it draws you in at once.

The alcove behind the curtain

An alcove is an old Viennese idea, a bed that withdraws into a niche, sheltered, half hidden. Here the curtain has the colour of a summer night, heavy velvet you draw with one hand. Behind it the room falls silent. The pattern of the wallpaper, blue and cream, runs all around like a fine lattice, and over the bed watches an old, white-painted headboard that was once a door. You lie in your own small world, in the middle of the city and yet far from it.

A ladder to the stars

Against the wall leans an old wooden ladder, worn and honest, and it leads up to a second place to sleep. When guests come, they simply climb above you, between the beams, almost under the roof. We call it climbing the stars, for up there one is a little closer to the sky and a little further from the everyday. Ladders like this once stood in workshops and libraries. Here it does the loveliest thing, it brings two people under one roof without either being in the other's way.

Blue, wood and the calm of things

The floor is herringbone oak parquet, warm underfoot, with a grain that takes the light in softly. On it a rug of sisal, a navy wool throw with fringe, a botanical print in a frame. Above it all the graphic wallpaper in blue and cream, a pattern that brings to mind the clear lines of the Wiener Werkstätte. None of it calls for attention. All of it together makes a room that receives you like an old home you have yet to get to know.