Famed for being the centre of bohemian life, Brooklyn’s one of the most stylish places in the world, with its famed artists’ lofts being amongst the greatest examples of industrial interior design.

Whilst its biggest influence was felt across the river in Manhattan, the Brooklyn loft has opened the eyes of interior designers and architects around the world as they work hard to make interiors that look thrown together and yet effortlessly cool.

The result they reached is the same as we did after 15 years of working with industrial materials; instead of shying away from the history of the warehouses and factories that were converted into spacious lofts, celebrate them and double down on their heritage.

So how do you get the Brooklyn loft look? Do you have to be based in Brooklyn? Do you need a loft? 

Or can a combination of scaffold board furniture, bare walls, industrial features and fighting your design instincts to cover all of these up help you to create a truly evocative space?

Possibly the most stylish and bohemian industrial style out there, the Brooklyn Loft look is a 

typically open-plan space which uses a distinctly artistic eye to celebrate the form of the functional materials that make many cities the financial, industrial and cultural hubs they are today.

First appearing in the 1970s as previously industrial buildings were being converted for residential use, the typically poor but incredibly talented artists, writers and thinkers who ended up in Brooklyn’s lofts would create a design language where they made the most of what they had.

Bare brick walls, bright windows and makeshift dining tables made from scaffold board were the main design style for people who lived and breathed their art and found a life being drenched in a community of like-minded starving artists. 

It was a combination of truly raw materials and idiosyncratic design that made the Brooklyn loft style thrive, even if it was technically illegal to do so until the 1982 Loft Law found a compromise that made what were almost uninhabitable havens much more like homes.

As New York as a whole and Brooklyn in particular have become increasingly gentrified and thus forced out a lot of the artists that made La Vie Boheme what it is, many of the original lofts still endure, and the style has spread far beyond Brooklyn, Manhattan and even the Bronx.

It is the type of space that refuses to apologise for being itself, and you see its influence everywhere from the most stylish industrial lofts in major cities to the likes of Central Perk from the sitcom Friends.

A Brooklyn loft has even housed the ITV team during the 2026 World Cup, with its industrial chic surroundings providing a striking backdrop for Roy Keane’s punditry.

This individualism has led to variations of the mould, and you do not necessarily have to be a devoted acolyte of the arts to want to live in an industrial loft now.

A key distinction to make is between hard lofts and soft lofts, which is the reason why any home can use its distinctive features alongside additional accoutrements to mirror the Brooklyn loft aesthetic.

A hard loft is a converted industrial building, complete with the strange dimensions and retained features that became characteristic of the interior design style which bears its name.

By contrast, a soft loft is any residential building or room which uses Brooklyn loft-type features, such as scaff brick cladding, to replicate the look of a Brooklyn loft.

Given the inherently idiosyncratic nature of Brooklyn lofts and the focus on personal touches and a DIY sensibility, there are a lot more differences than similarities even between lofts in the same complex.

So what do you need to incorporate into your Brooklyn loft? There are a lot more exceptions than rules, but here are some of the key features you see in this perfect encapsulation of industrial chic.

One of the most important design features of any Brooklyn loft is the natural materials and features that serve as relics of the industrial heritage of the building.

In particular, exposed brickwork and beton brut (raw, unvarnished concrete) are the most fundamental design features and will often shape the colour scheme and rest of the presentation of the loft.

As well as this, the natural hardwood floor necessary for its previous purpose as a workshop floor is perfect for your loft, often accentuated or zoned using large rugs.

As well as this, add exposed structural wooden beams and metal ductwork, and you have the 

perfect starting point for any Brooklyn loft.

What makes this even better is the capability to add more industrial features such as scaffold tubing to maximise the exposed, aesthetically honest style. 

If you have ever seen Monica’s apartment in Friends, then you will see how it looks as chic as it does basically by barely trying to match anything.

A kitchen with exposed brick and wooden supports is next to an astonishing lilac wall filled with art deco lighting and a coffee table seemingly made out of planks of wood, without the stylish flourishes of our own attempt.

Many Brooklyn lofts are described as minimalist, but that is simply not the case. What they are is cavernous, which means that they can have both the expressiveness of a maximalist room filled with stuff, whilst also providing the calm style and negative space of minimalism.

This is a product of the Brooklyn loft’s history; they were often rented by artists because they were cheap, and their high ceilings meant that they had the scope to design more ambitious projects and turn their homes into makeshift galleries.

Brooklyn lofts, like a lot of industrial living spaces, are open by design, which often means that almost, if not every, part of the home is in the same room.

You can take full advantage of this by using rugs, partitions, curtains and other freestanding dividers to create functional zones within your loft, which can be as big or as small as you like.

The last and most encompassing feature is that your loft needs to be a part of your personal story.

The Brooklyn artists who pioneered the style used them to showcase their skills, and that do-it-yourself punk ideology never truly left the Brooklyn loft even as it became more of a status symbol.

Most of them naturally showcased their own work, but alongside this, many also had plants and other greenery taking up space on rustic industrial shelves, had drapes and rugs along the floor and generally would fill the space with everything that speaks to them as a person.

Ready to try the Brooklyn loft look yourself? Explore our collection of reclaimed and new scaffold board furniture and embrace the heritage and functional aesthetics that have made them timeless.

The Scaff Shop works with customers on many levels. Some need more time, tools, or necessary skills; no matter the reason, you can purchase everything you need, and it can be delivered to your door as a finished product. Some customers have the time, skills and tools that may want to build your corner desk, and that is cool with us, too! What we have offered below is a list of the products required to make your perfect corner desk.

First up are the Scaffold Boards. One thing to remember when buying reclaimed scaffold boards is that they have previously been used. The life-altering wear and tear changes to those boards make them unique compared to new boards. For this, you will need four six-foot boards and two two-foot boards. Once the boards have been cut and joined together using biscuits, glue, and clamps, they will make the desktop. Sounds easy. Well, I'm sure there will be some sweat and tears before you finish.

Once the desktop is joined, you can start the finishing process by rubbing it down and selecting the type of oil you want to use to finish your desk. The last part is deciding what legs you want to use with your desk, which depends on the look you are going for.