Opener: Vintage Amisco Counter Stools; Oscar Pendant Lamps, RW Guild.
Not sure where to put her newfound cash flow, she bought two dream properties: a home in upstate New York and a 1,700-square-foot, two-bedroom loft in SoHo, which she renovated into a three-bedroom for her family: husband Paul, sons Moses (15) and Roman (13), and daughter Simone (7). “I was definitely approaching it as an investment—an investment we could live in,” says Ferney. “Just
the idea that I could ever own a house in New York City; I couldn’t believe it. Are you kidding me? That’s like a TV show.” The day of the closing,
she cried.
Her next move? Hiring architect Josh Keller and an owner’s advocate to manage the project and keep the contractors honest. Obviously she wouldn’t need an interior designer—that was all Ferney,
who sent Keller photos of European apartments with thick molding and regularly traipsed to the nearby Roman and Williams Guild, a French (and Scandinavian and Japanese) furnishings store,
for inspiration.
Left: Ladder, Putnam Rolling Ladder; Rodeo Paint, Benjamin Moore. Right: Roman Shades, The Shade Store; Velvet Sculptural Chair, Anthropologie; Paintings by Paul Ferney.
And while Ferney’s previous rental embraced a punchy palette and pattern, the SoHo space is softer and a bit more subdued than you’d expect from someone who launched a brand with “color” in the name. An ultra-veiny charcoal and white marble waterfall island grounds the open kitchen, and European white oak chevron flooring spans the entire home. The custom Rift Cabinetry cupboards? A calming dove color. “My palette was 50 shades of gray,” she jokes. “I was designing for a character in my brain, specifically trying to do things that were a little less risky and more classical.” In other words, Quiet Luxury Jordan had entered the building.
Even in her daughter’s room, where Ferney let Simone choose the paint (Benjamin Moore’s Kitten Whiskers), it ended up being a grayish hue so that it would feel cohesive with the rest of the apartment. (The one anti-neutral? The kids’ Fireclay blue tile bathroom.) The boys’ shared room is also neutral city, and Ferney says the small bedroom sizes were intentional: “I told Josh, if you have to pick between making the bedrooms a little bigger or giving space
to the common area, give it to the loft.”
“I realized, ‘Oh, shit, this isn’t like a place to live in. This is a business. I actually built a business,” she says. It was settled. Her family would move back into a rental, which, for her new alter ego, Quiet Luxury Jordan, felt more comfortable anyway. Before she knew it, she was slapping her signature saturated hues on the walls.
When she announced the pivot on Instagram, her followers were stunned—hadn’t she just built her dream home?!—and Ferney felt slightly embarrassed that she was uprooting her family after just eight months. “The reality is, we could have stayed there,” she says. “But if I want to be able to start a company without taking money from people who would tell
me how to run it, then I already have all our money—it’s in two houses.”
I realized, ‘Oh, shit, this isn’t like a place to live in. This is a business. I actually built a business.”
Mags Sofa, Hay; Custom Ottoman in Marbleized Velvet Fabric by Beata Heuman; The Bluejay Pillow, The Texel Pillow, Pierce & Ward; Hand Pillow, Sohn.
In that big bright and sunny room, two pebble gray Hay sofas encourage conversation, and a hidden Samsung Frame TV is tucked inside the bookshelf, which Ferney designed with museum shelving, the kind that displays a book’s front instead of its spine. “I really wanted to focus on texture,” she says, referring to layering objects, not just using nubby fabrics next to smooth ones. “So if I felt like a space looked boring, I was like, okay, how do I bring in more texture here?” Plant stands and columns also do the trick.
Above: Straight Column Shower with Hand Shower, Bespoke Taps. Right: Swizzle Sconce, Urban Electric; Tilda Chandelier, Arteriors; R.W. Atlas Bridge Faucet, Waterworks; Double Vanity Rounded Rectangle Metal Framed Mirror, Rejuvenation; Toggle Switch, Forbes & Lomax; Stone Hearth Paint, Benjamin Moore.
Above: Alien Orb Surface Mount, In Common With; Vintage Nightstand; Bedding, Bedthreads; Mohair Pillow and Throw, ABC Carpet & Home. Below: Each Hampton Curtain by Home Silks, Neiman Marcus.
Eventually, she says she’ll move the family back into the loft. But for now, it’s not her dream house—instead it’s an investment in her actual dreams. Ferney already feels at ease in the rental, where altering IKEA comes with much less pressure than deciding on $50,000 custom cabinetry. “It’s more lived-in and less precious,” she says. And when the serial entrepreneur launches her next venture in the spring, it will be where her vision really comes alive. The heated shower bench will have to wait.
Wardrobe Armoire Closet Clothes Storage Organizer for Bedroom Steel by VidaXL, Wayfair; Trofast Shelf, IKEA; Kitten Whiskers Paint, Benjamin Moore; Vintage Rug.
Above: Ceramic Spot Pendant Lamp, In Common With; Marquee Box by Tivoli, Danish Design Store. Right: Nautical Tile, Fireclay; Simone Gold Medicine Cabinet, Cooper Classics; Vintage Sconces.
Midnight Blue Paint, Benjamin Moore.
Custom Cabinetry, Rift; Citra Grey Hand-Knotted Wool Rug, Annie Selke; Bedding, Bedthreads; Fieldstone Paint, Benjamin Moore.
Custom Cabinetry, Rift; Frame TV, Samsung.
Then there are the next-level amenities that a former renter could only dream of: a seltzer tap in the kitchen, an entire wall of storage in the living room—Ferney admits to owning an “obscene” amount of cloth napkins—and in the primary bathroom, a heated shower bench and floor.
“When we have a party, I’ll come into the bedroom and everyone’s sitting in the shower and drinking wine—it’s hilarious,” she says. “I have so many pictures of friends having intimate conversations
in there because it’s so cozy.”
Ferney never thought they’d live in the loft forever—the plan was three to five years—but when the family moved in, she was already dreaming up her next venture, a collective of retail spaces in the same Manhattan neighborhood. So the savvy creative got, well, creative. She Zillow-ed what lofts in the area rent for and found that she could lease her new home to create additional income.
Creative Jordan Ferney finally achieved a life dream: a SoHo loft for her family to live in. Then after staying there just eight months, they moved back into a rental.
Movin’
Photography by Sean Davidson | Words by Julie Vadnal | Produced by Kate Berry
—SoHo, New York, to
be exact—but it begins in St. George, Utah, where Jordan Ferney grew up. “My dad was a schoolteacher, we were eight kids, and we just
didn’t have money,” she says. But she was always creative and an intensely hard worker, and in 2006, two years after graduating from college, she launched the wildly addictive party decor site Oh Happy Day, a definitive standout in the blogosphere of the time. (TikTokers today could never.)
It was all a precursor to 2017’s The Color Factory, Ferney’s museum for chromatic geeks that was so much more than Instagram fodder. Displays at the multihued immersive space discussed theory and history—and, yes, there was a pastel blue ball pit. But after it launched, Ferney felt overwhelmed. In 2018, she sold it.
This is a New York story
Shop the Story
Velvet Sculptural Chair, Anthropologie
Citra Grey Hand-Knotted Wool Rug, Annie Selke
Wardrobe Armoire Closet Clothes Storage Organizer for Bedroom Steel by VidaXL, Walmart
Pillow by Pierce & Ward,
The Expert
On Ferney: Loeffler Randall.
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