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Best Design Shops on Queen West

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Queen West and Bathurst is where modern accessories, furniture, lighting and more – from big box shops and design stalwarts – collide.

A successful day of shopping begins with a wish list and a plan of attack and nothing makes it easier than having just one part of town to hit up. Queen West is packed with design-y goodness. It’s here – not far from where Queen intersects Bathurst – that you’ll find flooring and lighting, furniture (both with new- and old-school cool), and accessories for every room. Let’s take a tour, from east to west, before you order curbside pickup.

The Adelaide Project

This is where sophisticated forms and out-of-this-world technology unite – we guarantee that the contemporary lighting fixtures at this completely remodelled century home will blow you away. Read the listing here.

Umbra

From bits and bobs like bathroom hardware and office essentials to planters and space-saving furnishings, Umbra has you covered. Our favourites: everything in the Umbra Shift collection. Read the listing here.

Trends & Trades

The city’s source for the T&T Wood Private Collection and Itlas (shown) – bespoke flooring with wide and long planks, available in a variety of custom finishes and suitable for projects big and small. Read the listing here.

CB2

Brimming with cool and space-saving furnishings – plus all the accoutrements – CB2 is a big box shop dedicated to condo-living but set to an indie-beat. Meaning: there’s plenty of funky fresh stuff to be found inside. Read the listing here.

Bungalow

This Kensington Market staple offers vintage Scandinavian goodness, everything from everyday furnishing essentials to crowd-pleasing novelties. Check Bungalow’s social media for what’s in stock. Read the listing here.

Neat

Organization nuts and neat freaks rejoice: this appropriately named shop has everything you need to keep your home shipshape, especially that makeshift office space you are working away in. Read the listing here.

Urban Mode

Operating in the modern furnishing world since 1977 (!), this furniture and accessory stalwart is the spot to stock up on Blu Dot, Muuto, Softline and Normann Copenhgagen. Read the listing here.

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Okay, but it clearly is

For the first 16 years of my life, the bat cave at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM)—a reconstruction of an actual cave in Jamaica—was among my favourite places in the city. The cave was decorated with cast stalactites and wax bat models, which hung from the ceiling and threw jagged shadows on the walls. A few other features imbued it with spooky verisimilitude: the drip-drip-drip sound effects, the mirrors arranged to create the illusion of infinite depth, the strobe lights strategically placed to make the shadows flutter. When I visited as a five-year-old, the bat cave scared me. When I visited as a stoned fifteen-year-old, it scared me even more. Then came the renovation.

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