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Peek inside Lena Dunham’s quirky, colorful West Village home

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The writer and Girls creator has found a West Village apartment to call home

A black daybed with red-and-white pillows, with small gold tables on either side. There are six framed photographs behind the daybed.
Six framed pieces of art—including a Vogue cover on which Lena Dunham appeared—hang over a black daybed from Crate & Kids.
Photos by Alberto Zanetti, courtesy of Domino

Writer and Girls creator Lena Dunham has made plenty of real estate moves in New York City: She’s lived in two separate Brooklyn Heights apartments, and bought (and later sold) a minimalist pad in Williamsburg’s Gretsch Musical Instruments factory last year.

But now, she calls the West Village home—”my whole identity was, like, Brooklyn, and now I’m like, Thank you, Lord. I’m back amongst my tribe, which is like old people puttering around the health-food store,” she told New York last year—and recently let Domino in to her apartment for the magazine’s fall issue.

“This apartment seemed appropriate for a long interstitial, an extended pause,” Dunham writes in an essay that accompanies photos of the space. “I didn’t know about the beauty of the building, its eccentric internal culture, the storied residents.”

Dunham brought interior designer Ariel Okin on to, in her words, “arrange the things I’ve accumulated in an inventive and loving way.” Those things include items acquired from the online furniture emporium 1stdibs (including a Venini chandelier, which hangs in the entryway, and one of Ettore Sottsass’s iconic wavy mirrors), as well as more approachable items, like dining room chairs from Anthropologie and a credenza from CB2. There are tons of personal touches throughout the space, too: Artwork by Dunham’s friends, a framed copy of a Vogue issue that she covered, and a poster featuring Gilda Radner, the late comedian and Saturday Night Live star.

In the essay, Dunham reflects on her history of apartment living—which included living with a partner who hated how she decorated a previous space, and the experience of being “real-estate shamed” after selling that Williamsburg condo, which she says she “in a state of panic, feeling like if I didn’t put down roots soon I’d float away.”

But her current apartment, she writes, is a place where she can finally put down roots. “I’ve stopped looking in other people’s windows. I’m my mother’s daughter, but I’m finally home.”

Take the full tour over at Domino.

An Ettore Sottsass mirror and CB2 scallop table are the focal points of this room.
A living room has a cream-colored coffee table, couch, and side chair. There are throw pillows in shades of purple, blue, pink, and green, and a painting of a girl in a polka-dot dress behind the couch.
Throw pillows and a painting by Kristen Reichert lend pops of color to the otherwise neutral living room.
A woman with brown hair wearing a pink sweater with smiley faces on it. She is sitting in a wood-frame modern chair with cream-colored cushions.
Dunham in one of her Fritz Hansen lounge chairs.
A wooden credenza is topped with a yellow lamp with a white shade, a wooden vase with orange tulips, a painting of a panda bear sitting on a toilet, and a handmade yellow vase.
A credenza from CB2 is topped with pieces created by some of Dunham’s friends, as well as a poster of comedian Gilda Radner.