Developing apartments just isn’t what it used to be. Today’s renter is a hipper, more sophisticated and savvier-than-ever consumer seeking affordable living spaces that are designed with their lifestyle in mind. The boring beige apartment complexes that saturate our Phoenix skyline have given way to design-oriented places to live that are being styled – and repositioned – by boutique interior design firms like Phoenix-based Private Label. Celebrating the opening of Cabana on Seventh, their seventh property of the Cabana Modern Apartment Homes brand, the award-winning design team is rapidly changing the interior design industry by cultivating lifestyle experiences that bring big value to developers through strategic branding and environment design.

“Commercial interior design is not about designing a space that is functional and looks pretty,” said Private Label principal Wendi Stallings. “Savvy developers now know that multi-family housing should be a lifestyle experience for buyers and renters, and they’re buying into the brand and lifestyle it represents when they choose to live at a property,” she said.

With infill development and property revitalization projects at an all time high, the Valley’s top developers are finding they need to rely on this kind of interior design strategy to attract and retain buyers and renters at a visceral level and to remain relevant in the ever changing market.

“For the Cabana brand, which is targeted to the millennial renter, it has been crucial that the design of each property is hip and stylish yet still authentic by pulling in inspiration and materials from the local community,” said Pat Watts, Partner for Deco Communities, the developer of Cabana Modern Apartment Homes. “Affordability is key for the Cabana consumer and Private Label has created incredibly creative, visually appealing and trendsetting spaces using materials and design schemes that would attract our targeted renters and allow us to maintain our price point for the property,” she said.

Private Label takes interior design to the next level by building a strategic and comprehensive brand into the space that buyers and renters experience in a truly tangible way. From the sights, sounds, textiles, furnishings, landscaping and even the scent of a space, Private Label utilizes all six senses to build brand meaning, distinguish from the competition and convey a sense of place, a sense of value and a sense of personality.

For Cabana on Seventh, Private Label’s design approach started with canvassing North Central Phoenix’s eclectic 7th Street neighborhood to find the pulse points of style and design in the area. Private Label stylishly redesigned its 74 fully-renovated units, exteriors, landscape, leasing office, fitness center, pool area and model units offering a urban-influenced living space designed for Gen Y renters.

Located at 5615 N. 7th Street in Phoenix, , across the street from the FOX Restaurant Concepts The Yard housing Culinary Dropout and Little Cleo’s Seafood Legend, Cabana on Seventh is located in one at the heart of one of the hottest up-and-coming neighborhoods in north central Phoenix. “Each Cabana identity is slightly different, which is a core value of the Cabana brand to cultivate and integrate with the indigenous neighborhood and elevate the property to enrich the fabric of the community. Cabana has been an exciting brand to develop as each has been part of an up-and-coming neighborhood breathing life into the fabric of Phoenix and other metropolitan areas,” Stallings said. “It is our goal that through our branded interiors, exteriors and curb appeal that Cabana on Seventh evolves into an iconic destination that someday might define the neighborhood,” she said.

With five properties spread across the Valley’s most buzzed-about neighborhoods plus one in Las Vegas, Private Label has worked closely with the developer to cultivate the Cabana Modern Apartment Homes brand to be an entirely new multi-housing niche for hip, modern and affordable reincarnations of infill properties that feel more like a chic boutique hotel than an apartment complex. Other developers have followed suit, using the Cabana model and Private Label’s branding strategy to revitalize infill properties around the state and across the US.