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Having grown up in Los Angeles’s South Bay, Kelly Dawson wanted to experience another part of the sprawling city when she decided to leave her parents’ house and move into her own home. But the writer, editor, and marketing consultant (whose writing frequently appears in AD) had non-negotiable requirements that made her apartment search especially challenging.
“I was born with cerebral palsy and it mostly affects my legs, so it makes it difficult to have to live in a place that has a lot of stairs,” she explains. “I looked around the East Side for a while and could not find a place that was accessible. I went to the West Side and that was out of my budget. Finally, I came [back] here.”
About 10 minutes from her childhood home, Kelly found the perfect spot: a ground-floor unit in a beachside building that doesn’t have a single stair at the entrance or in the lobby. She can walk straight from the street into her apartment, without any plane change. Plus the interiors had recently been renovated, yet the rent was significantly discounted because it lacks the Pacific views that the upper levels have.
“If I’m on the patio and I lean over the edge and the tree in front of me is cut just so, I can still see the ocean,” Kelly jokes. “But really, I loved the natural light. I also loved the fact that the floors were all one level and everything was laid out really well. It’s compact, but it feels spacious enough for one.”
In furnishing the 800-square-foot abode, Kelly made sure to prioritize both accessibility and style. All of the seating, for example, had to be a particular height (three feet from the ground) and sturdy enough to support her pushing off, but it also had to match her sophisticated California aesthetic. She paired a midnight blue Living Spaces sofa with a camel leather Home Goods armchair in the living area, while she chose sage spindle-back chairs from Article for the dining zone.
“When people think of accessible design, they think of a hospital room, and that doesn’t have to be the case,” she says. “After all my years of design writing, this was my moment. I finally had this open space to do everything that I’ve learned from my day job to make my private life comfortable. And I really wanted to do it in a way where you wouldn’t be able to know that it was accessible to me unless you were really paying attention.”
Kelly combined three low-slung IKEA bookshelves to create a console below her wall-mounted TV, where she displays all her books, old National Geographic magazines, and beloved objects. She also invested in oversized, self-watering plants and hung up artworks she’d been saving for her future home, like a floral William Morris print and an abstract face image. She framed leaf motif Chasing Paper wallpaper samples she was sent for a story too.
In the bedroom, Kelly channeled British elegance with a taupe velvet headboard, an antique-style vanity from The Home Depot, a Minted landscape print, and daintily-striped Anthropologie curtains that were a splurge. “I had this vision in my head of thinly striped curtains,” she remembers. “They were like $140 when I really just wanted to spend 20 bucks tops, so I call them my heirloom curtains because I will be passing them on to my niece and nephew. They are super expensive, but they’re lovely.”
Both the bedroom and the living area connect to the patio, which Kelly outfitted with a rust red Target rug and sand-hued furniture she snagged off-season from Big Lots. “I really like going out there and eating breakfast,” she shares. “I read out there too. When I have parties, it’s really nice because I can open both of the sliding doors and everyone can mingle in and out.” It’s that indoor-outdoor California lifestyle people dream about—fully accessible and on a budget.
