Interior Designers Reinvent The New York Apartment

For home decorators, New York City is a land of plenty, teeming with talented furniture makers, textile designers and antique dealers. There’s an increasing emphasis on creating tranquil oases in which to retire from the frenzied streets below, away from the grit of the subway and the clamor of iPods. Some design professionals say this movement is giving rise to clean, uncluttered spaces and a color palette of warm, glowing tones. It’s also giving people the freedom to choose eclectic décor pieces that express their personality instead of adhering to one genre for consistency’s sake.
But one constant will always shape design concerns in New York: limited space. Local interior designers are forever being bidden to make spaces look roomier, unlike their counterparts in Los Angeles – another intellectual capital for design – where projects can be undertaken on a larger scale.
“In New York, everything has to be carefully woven together to create this total environment that flows from one room to the next,” said Benjamin Huntington of the design firm MH Studio.

Designing Family Space
Space is even more of a premium when families grow. In the last three or four years, Huntington has seen more clients electing to stay in New York to raise families – opting to buy and renovate adjacent apartments instead of fleeing to the suburbs. As people come to view every room in their home as a sanctuary, scrupulous attention is being paid to kitchens and bathrooms – which often copy the atmosphere of a spa. Designers are routinely being asked to knock down walls to recapture space from hallways and closets, which is then integrated into the whole.

The minimalist approach is part of a growing less is more movement among young apartment dwellers.

Young people “really want to have less things,” said Nancy Gesimondo, a designer and professor at the School of Visual Arts, who’s unsure whether it’s a reaction against the clutter that amasses in small apartments or a result of nomadic people in their twenties and thirties wanting to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. “I think people want to sort of live light.”

Knowledgeable Clients
In some cities, interior decorators do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to designing for clients. But New York designers say their clients – who tend to enter a business relationship armed with knowledge after perusing shelter magazines, trolling the Internet and grilling their friends – are remarkably conversant in breaking design news.

“In New York, everyone knows what’s right and wrong and they’re concerned about it being very this and very that,” said Ed Lobrano, whose firm also has offices in San Francisco, where clients are more laidback.

But the forces that govern trends are often inscrutable, and a well-informed clientele doesn’t necessarily stop fashions that may be repented of in hindsight from becoming huge. Veteran designer Gerald Tolomeo, for one, is relieved that the “stuffed shirt mentality” that ruled in the last decade has dwindled into insignificance.

“In the 1990s, there was chintz and chintz and chintz and chintz,” he said. “You could die from it.”

There’s no absolute agreement on the prevailing trend of today, though most designers concur that a deeper color palette is en vogue. Huntington has noticed a more widespread use of eco-friendly materials and fabrics. Lobrano has spotted darker finishes, bamboo flooring and even a retro inclination toward linoleum flooring in kitchens – once the height of unfashionable. Tolomeo sees greater eclecticism in the selection of décor.

Blurring Tradition
Another trend is the mixing of traditional design and modernism. It’s become commonplace for French Louis XVI pieces to be juxtaposed with mid-century and contemporary furniture, for example.

But traditional and modern aren’t ideas that are always understood by laymen. Many designers say they have to decipher what their clients want.

“My clients that are basically traditional clients – they say they want modern, but they don’t really want modern,” said Lobrano, who adds flourishes like contemporary coffee tables and wall coverings for clients he senses are plunging too recklessly into modernism.

Designers have to know what a space requires, said Jennifer Logun, a designer and professor at the Pratt Institute. Nineteenth century furniture in a Tribeca loft might seem incoherent, and, in the same vein, an ultra-modern interior would be jarring in a pre-war apartment with intricate moldings and trim overlooking Central Park.

“To go in and put in a very modern sleek design, for me, it doesn’t quite fit,” said Logun, of the archetypal Upper East Side apartment. “It’s important to respect the context of the space itself.”