Final Say: Is It OK to Have a TV In Your Bedroom?
We asked a super high-end interior expert (who happens to be best friends with Chelsea Clinton).
For years we’ve heard conflicting advice when it comes to whether or not a TV is permissible in the bedroom. Some say absolutely not while others…meh? What’s the big deal? Given our fondness for late-night Netflix binges (and the resulting next-day puffy eyes and sleepy demeanors), we’re torn. But we finally got the answer we wanted, which we’ll get to in a minute.
About a month ago, we were invited to a dinner at Apparatus Studio to launch Ronen Lev—a truly genius interiors inspiration site that spotlights up-and-coming talent. The dinner was in honor of the site’s founder, Jessica Kamel, and hosted by her best buddy, Chelsea Clinton. We’ve been to a lot of very fancy dinners, but this one made us slightly more nervous than the others.
Before Chelsea toasted Jessica (it was one of the warmest, most beautiful, and charming speeches we’ve ever heard, by the way—delivered 100 percent sans notes), we sat down with Kamel and quizzed her on how she marries the realities of being a working New Yorker and mother with having exquisite and functional interiors. Here are the three most salient tips we gathered for nailing both.
Do what feels good:
“TV in the bedroom is a yes in my house. I don’t ever channel-surf, my husband and I actually rarely watch cable at all, so when we watch something together it’s usually premeditated and something we look forward to, like a show on Netflix or Hulu. At the end of the day it gives us a chance to just unwind and escape from our kids!”
Fill your space with things you love, but just a few things:
“I strive to create a balanced home—a home in which well-being thrives. Especially for us city-dwellers, coming home to a calm space in the form of a thoughtfully curated house, inhabited with objects you love, allows for those much-needed moments of relaxation and connection and a happier human experience. I keep the overall aesthetic of my home pretty neutral and fill it with objects that I’ve collected over the years and have meaning to me. [I’m inspired by] the Scandinavian interpretation of a calm home, which has always been to add a little thing to make a design more human or inspired by nature. There’s a lot of furniture made from natural materials in my home. Small changes like that can make a big difference.”
Put your damn phone down:
“I intentionally leave my phone in another room. I also try not to answer emails as soon as I wake up or right before bed. The first morning emails usually stress me out, and that’s the time I’m with my kids getting them ready to go to school, and I want my focus to be on them. The morning is all about setting the tone for the day, and trying to respond to emails that aren’t urgent sets the wrong tone. I’m working my way towards setting it to airplane mode from 8:00 PM to 8:00 AM, but can’t quite pull the trigger. Baby steps.”
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