Beauty and the budget Issue #25

How Windy Chien decorated her fabulous San Francisco apartment on the cheap

By Marisa Meltzer
Published: September 1st, 2005 | 3:37pm

You know those apartments that have been passed through many generations of artistic types, filled with a rotating cast of roommates, pets, and bad furniture? Windy Chien’s two-bedroom San Francisco apartment started out that way. When she moved into the Mission District flat with a boyfriend about 14 years ago, the floors were torn up and the paint job was awful. Now the apartment is filled with bright vinyl furniture from Sally Ann’s in yellows and red. Everything comes from eBay and the Salvation Army around the corner — she swears the most she spent on anything was a chair and ottoman for $75.

Since Chien used to own San Francisco’s Aquarius Records, she has the kind of CD collection that can only be acquired from working at a record store for 12 years. It easily takes up half the living room. She has about 14 floating cedar shelves that an “accursed” carpenter ex-boyfriend made for her. After selling her record shop a year and half ago, she worked as a political consultant. Last spring, she started work as a producer at iTunes, where she’s responsible for the Essentials section of in-house compilations.

To soften all the hard edges of the CDs, records, and books, Chien likes to have a lot of fake nature around. “I try to bring nature into an otherwise lifeless space,” she says. This comes in the form of fake flower bouquets, ceramic deer and animals. She even has a few lawn-ornament deer that are almost life-size.

The apartment hosts a collection of high- and low-brow culture that feels perfectly curated: Art from friends like Maya Hayuk, Chris Corales, Alicia McCarthy, sock monkies she commissioned from Cup Iwata, mirrors lining the foyer, toys from Kidrobot, Asian-themed lamps with little Chinese figures sitting on them, and the ubiquitous paint-by-numbers paintings. “Now I have so many that I have to divide them into themes!” Chien shrugs and admits she has about 75.

Even though people are always trying to give her paintings as a gift, she prefers ones that fit into each room’s theme. Animal portraits cover the bathroom (“so you don’t feel lonely,” says Chien), and dancers are in the kitchen, where Windy hosts infamous homemade potsticker parties. The living-room walls are lined with landscapes and a lot of deer and moose. Ships and seascapes are in the spare bedroom.

Chien says the paint-by-numbers must be less than $30 and they have to be in wooden frames because the wood frames contrast nicely with the blue walls. The exact shade of her walls has become her signature color, which many now refer to as “Windy Blue.” “It's actually Brandon's Blue from Kelly Moore Paint,” she says. “Even though it is quite bright, I actually think of it as a neutral. It is the closest to the kind of blue the sky is on a bright day.”

But for all the creams and blues in the apartment, Chien’s bedroom is startlingly different. For one, there’s not a single paint-by-numbers painting in sight. For another, the walls are painted a sort of valentine, coral-colored red. Instead of hidden away, her clothes, bags, and shoes are part of the décor. “I believe in using things as opposed to ‘decorating.’ Plus, hanging clothes around is just to remind myself that they need mending!”

The only problem with Chien’s apartment is that she’s running out of room. “I would keep collecting were it not for the lack of space,” she says. Fortunately, now that she has an office job, she has a cubicle of her own, and therefore, a new place to decorate. Chien’s already started bringing in the potted plants and framed posters.