I wish I had a bigger house, I'm joking.

I'm Christy Ward, welcome to my 650 square foot apartment in New York City.

When I was studying at Parsons, I met my now business partner Staver Gray and we then started Ward and Gray about four years ago, focusing on boutique hotels.

I love designing hotels, I like how they can be experiential and fun and you can take a bit more of a risk with them.

When designing this apartment, I really thought of it as a hotel.

This space is about the same for a large hotel room, so I thought in the same way how do I create rooms within a room.

It is a studio apartment but I wanted to have a dining space, a living space, a workspace and creating all those little nooks was something very important to me.

The first time we walked through the apartment, every single wall was a different color, so there were avocado green walls in the living room, pink and purple walls in the bathroom and in the kitchen and I was excited because I saw all this opportunity here.

So I started drawing all these options for the floor plans.

The idea was to bring as much function as possible into it.

This is our living room.

When we first saw this apartment, one of our favorite things was that we were just across from two parks actually, so you get a lot of greenery in the space and you kind of get a breakthrough into the fabrics here.

I had photoshopped this room with a really deep navy first, but then when I got here and started putting color on the walls as test runs, I saw that the lighter color just really opened up the space more and that's kind of what we needed here.

For our chandelier, we had it made with a glass master and I pulled that same green that you see from the park and on the wall sconces into the chandelier with the light blue that's also in our kind of helped to tie that room together.

The sofa has been with us through our whole time in New York and when we moved in here we thought, why not keep it?

So we decided to reupholster it in these really fun and lively colors and then we have this cardenza on this side which is just kind of the focal point of the room and it kind of showcases the art.

These are fish I found, they're little ceramic ones.

Every summer we like to go to Praiano and in their alleyways they stick ceramic fish into the stucco walls and I always thought that was such a beautiful idea and so I've been collecting them kind of thinking of doing that for a future project or house.

I love this lamp in the corner as well, it's really fun because you can kind of tilt it if you're reading here just hanging out.

I thought what was nice is that it just kind of makes the room feel a bit taller being installed higher, it just creates a lot of height in the open floor plan before for the bed and the living space.

We did decide to cut it off and make it two spaces so that we had more privacy into the bedroom and I think that helped to create a more intimate space here.

To us I think making it smaller actually made it a bit more functional.

This is our bedroom.

So we're just off the living room which we separated by this glass and metal divider.

We knew we wanted to have some sort of separation between the living room and the bedroom and so I came up with the idea to do a glass and metal divider something I did previously in a project for Soho House.

We were trying to separate there the bedroom and the bathroom but here I thought that was a great solution for privacy.

We are really deciding between a ribbed glass or a clear glass and ultimately I really to get that natural light when I woke up in the morning.

Sometimes I like to just hang out in bed, have a cup of coffee on the weekends and I wanted to feel like it was morning and I could see what was happening in the city without feeling too disconnected.

So that's why we ultimately decided to go with the clear glass.

This bed I designed with a factory actually in Portugal and the fabric we custom designed for the bed.

So we've pulled out that green that's in the wall sconces and used the same color to create this hand block stripe.

My favorite detail of this bed is the fringe at the base which is really fun and playful.

The position of the bed was important.

At one point I had moved it over to the side and played around with a little bedside table but ultimately you really wanted the space on either side of the bed to just free up the space, feel a little lighter and not like you're smushed up into a corner.

The challenge I think with living in a small space is having self-control not to buy everything you see in an antique shop or when you travel you just have to know what you need and not over-purchase but it is nice to collect.

This is our kitchen.

When we first saw this space the previous owner had cabinets that were on it up.

With this space we really wanted it to function as a kitchen but also as a workspace so we actually cut this countertop in here to create this little nook and we added the bar stools and this is actually what we use as a little workspace and then we added these upper shelves here so we can just put our little objects and then in the cabinets we actually used this clear glass on top so that it felt more open and we also had beadboard done at the back of the cabinet just to add that nice little detail.

The biggest challenge with this space is it's very narrow so we had to be really thoughtful about what we were putting in here.

We knew we had to have a full-size range and fridge but the idea to hide the fridge away in this panel really helped so it doesn't feel like a ton of equipment it just kind of looks like nice thoughtful cabinetry and then here we did this marble shelf that's open and we just store little objects on here and things we collect but I think it makes the space kind of feel less like a kitchen and more like another room of the house.

There's this painting here by the amazing Frankie Thorpe and we commissioned her to do it based off Praiano, a place we go every summer.

Frankie actually included this glass from our Moncada home collection Spike and we named him after our favorite character from Notting Hill.

We went with Ferrum Ball Light Blue for the cabinetry in here and we felt like that gave it a very calm feel.

It just feels kind of soft and nice and then we use a Honcur marble for the countertops and that just lightened everything up even more.

We're really lucky to have this window here that looks out to a beautiful park so that brings in a lot of light.

We used a nice linen shear and I think that just creates this ambient glow.

What I love about this space is it's really multifunctional so when I'm here cooking or chopping my husband can kind of perch on these bars tools and hang out and it's just nice in such a small space to be able to both be in here and be doing two things at once but it still works.

If I could change something about this space I might add a door because we do get some light leakage into the bedroom mostly because these are sheer curtains but I think it's worth it for the nice arch we get coming into the space.

This is our dining nook.

Previously this was one big wide corridor.

The old owner had a big cabinet here and it was kind of overwhelming the space.

It felt very tight.

This was one of the things I wasn't sure if I was going to invest in.

On the floor plan it felt like maybe it wanted to stay a wide passageway into the living room and bedroom but I'm actually really happy I did this because it created a whole new room within this room and it's one of the most used spaces in our house.

We decided to eat into this wall to create this built-in millwork piece.

We did it in the same light blue since it's right across from the kitchen and then added the same beadboard details that's behind the kitchen cabinets and this just created a ton of storage for us.

So on the right and left side we have wardrobes here and then below the little nook bench we also have storage when we have people over our friends can kind of hang out here perch on these chairs and then I'm in the kitchen but it's very social because there's no door and so everyone just kind of gets to mingle.

So with small spaces I feel like storage is always the biggest issue so for us adding this whole corridor of closets was really impactful for us.

These were formed by our contractor and he was using this kind of bendy plywood that took the corner and then he hand plastered over.

This is actually a art deco building it was built in the 30s and the plaster was original to the building so we wanted to make sure we use that here as well.

So this is our bathroom.

When we first started doing the layouts for this space we toyed with the idea of making the bathroom bigger but ultimately I thought storage was more important for clothes and things like that.

I think it was the right decision in the end we have so much and trying to pack it all into a studio can be tough so I think the storage was a better use of space.

The bathroom is quite tight so we used this light blue color to open it up and make it feel a little bit larger.

I couldn't find a 24 inch wide vanity off the shelf so I really had to custom make this one.

It's a very tight space so easing the corners of the backsplash really helped and I think makes it feel less angular and gives a nice kind of flow.

The mirror has these eased edges it's actually a polished nickel but I thought I just spoke to the rest of the apartment with the curves.

I used the same sconce that I used throughout the house with that green just to tie in the colors.

The whole process took us about a year but I feel like it wasn't that grand moment when you walk into a space and it was finished because I little by little was still never really done.

This was the first apartment I have designed for myself.

I think having done it once now I just want to keep doing it again and again.

The important thing I think in a studio apartment is just making sure everything is functional and has a purpose.

I think we've managed to fit a lot in here.

We have our little dining space, a bedroom, living room, workspace.

I think that's quite unique in a studio and also I guess our things make it unique.

They feel uniquely us.