Decorating – Jonathan Fong Style

Serenity Bedroom

admin — Wed, 16 Dec 2015 07:14:18 +0000

A bedroom using Pantone’s 2016 Color of the Year, Serenity. Although Serenity is at first glance a baby blue, it can look very sophisticated when mixed with the right colors.

Jewish Journal Office Design

admin — Wed, 28 Jan 2015 08:35:27 +0000

For the design of the L.A. Jewish Journal‘s new offices, I created an “old journalism” meets “new media” concept. Every door was covered in graphic black and white photo murals, contrasting with the bright color accents on walls and carpeting. For more photographs and commentary, check out the entry in my blog.

Therapist Office Design

admin — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 16:15:42 +0000

Teen therapist Sandra Dupont gets it. When she moved into her new office, she wasn’t content to just take whatever furniture came with the space, or furnish it with extra furniture that might be lying around her house. She wanted her office designed from the floor up, with every detail fashioned to create a comfortable, relaxing and secure environment for her teen clients and their parents. Her care with her office reflects her care for her clients. It’s a lesson for all of us.

The sectional and chair in this room are from west elm. The triptych above the sectional is actually a beautiful art mural from muralsyourway.com. It’s a wallpaper mural, but instead of applying it to the wall, I glued it to three hollow interior doors – a simple and inexpensive framing trick.

McPhee Vocal Studio

admin — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 10:20:35 +0000

One of the reasons I loved designing the studio of American Idol vocal coaches Peisha McPhee and Adriana McPhee Collin was that the original space was so plain. It was an auto leasing company, so you can imagine how boring that was. I wanted to create a space that was elegant, functional and would make students feel like stars. This is one of those spaces where I don’t want to leave once I’m there, it’s that comfortable.

My House

admin — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 08:52:34 +0000

My home was the very first decorating I ever did. Because I had no formal training, and I had a wild imagination, I just did things I thought might be fun, and it all turned out pretty well, I guess. It started me on a design career, as well as a mantra for dramatic, simple and inexpensive decorating solutions. I have a word puzzle above the fireplace. Decoupaged dining chairs and kitchen cabinets. Walls of aluminum roof flashing and fabric panels. Yeah, your typical home. These photos were taken by Image Locations.

Menswear Apartment

admin — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 08:32:38 +0000

This is one of my favorite makeovers, partly because the “before” was so extreme. What this apartment needed was organization (including lots of storage, which you don’t see in the photos), and a polished, buttoned-up look that represented the professional client. I went with a menswear, Mad Men, look, but with a modern twist, like the giant wall-sized mural of the calla lilies wrapped in a necktie that I created at muralsyourway.com, and throw pillows with fabric that had recipes of martinis. In the bedroom, I was inspired by the upholstered Vermeer headboards that the Paramount Hotel in New York used to feature.

Greystone Mansion Showcase

admin — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 07:54:54 +0000

Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills is a beautiful estate that is used in many movie shoots, like Spiderman and There Will Be Blood. I was honored to be asked to design a room in the house for its annual design showcase. I went high concept with my theme, which was: “If God were vacationing in Beverly Hills, what would the guest room look like?” Heavenly, of course. I installed an illuminated headboard with an angel sunning by the pool, an original photo taken by photographer Brian Davis just for this room. (This 6-foot wide art piece is now in my living room.) I had a halo of feathers suspended above the bed. Fabric printed with giant magnolias upholstered the walls. And I glued hundreds of feathers to the window sheers. Much of the furniture and accessories were donated by my friends at west elm.

Above is the hallway outside the room, which I was also responsible for decorating. I wanted high impact and drama, so I got a photograph of a crystal chandelier courtesy of the James R. Moder company and had it blown up onto custom wallpaper. I did get a big wow effect, as gigantic nine-foot tall chandeliers greeted visitors when they got to the hallway. The custom wallpaper was from muralsyourway.com. I just sent them a digital image, and they created the wallpaper. They were even nice enough to color match the background color with a PMS chip, so I had the exact color I wanted.

Vintage Chair Makeover

admin — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 07:20:35 +0000

My friend Joanne was given these really cool armchairs from the 60s by her aunt. The upholstery was frayed around the piping, and the seats were pretty much thrashed, but the sides and backs were in decent shape, though sun and age had faded the vividness of the original fabric. My idea was not to reupholster them, but paint the chair. Everyone thought I was crazy. Even the decorative painter, Leonard Greco, didn’t want to do it. But I persevered, and the chair now looks like a museum piece. We did get new upholstered cushions, but for all the places on the chair that the body doesn’t touch, i.e., the sides and the back, paint was fine. And we didn’t use hard, brittle paint, but diluted Americana acrylic paints that soaked into the fabric and gave it a nice color wash. Oh, and I just touched up the frayed piping with Mod Podge. We painted over it, anyway.

Kids’ Rooms

admin — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 06:43:59 +0000

I love designing kids’ rooms because I get to create the fantasy rooms I never got to have when I was little.

Warhol Kitchen

admin — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 05:33:17 +0000

My kitchen used to be all-white. It was very sterile-looking. I wanted to do something to it, but wasn’t sure what to do until one day I was at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and all the Andy Warhol posters were 40% off because it was the last day of the exhibit. Suddenly, it came to me. I would decoupage all the kitchen cabinets in Andy Warhol posters. I had never decoupaged, and I didn’t know if the posters would fit, but I bought all the posters in the store in total faith. I went home, measured the cabinets, and matched the posters to the appropriately-sized cabinet doors. Then I had to figure out how to decoupage. I e-mailed the nation’s best decoupage artist, Durwin Rice, author of New Decoupage, and he actually e-mailed me back and told me how to do it. This kitchen has gotten more than its 15 minutes of fame, getting coverage in newspapers, magazines and websites around the world, but it’s funny how it brought out the haters on internet comment boards. It’s like I slapped people’s children, some people were so offended by it. They actually said I would regret this. (What, are they coming for me with pitchforks?) Hey, it got their attention.