Three Designers

A friend recently told me that one of the harried young mothers in her women's group was concerned about redecorating the baby's room. "Do you think I can design it myself?" she asked.

If the answer to that question is no, not to worry: there is professional help. I spoke to three interior designers and I asked them about working in the city, aboutthe New York style and about their own personal tastes.

Erica Millar of Erica Millar Design has been creating New York interiors for years. According to The Franklin Report, an upscale guide to home services, Millar's designs are understated and serene: "Living rooms are generally in the $150,000 range, before major antiques and carpets."

Millar does most of her work on the Upper East and Upper West Sides. She often works with families, so I asked her about the special considerations of designing for children.

"Homes that are friendly to children are important, because we don't have the great suburban luxury of outdoor spaces and size... You have to deal with kids' needs. Which are one thing when they're little and another as they become school age and they're doing hours of homework. So I try to keep things so that kids can grow into their rooms and not be too specific too early. When you do rooms for multiple siblings it's also how you keep it sort of democratic. So each kid feels they have some individuality and you're not just doing a stamped-out arrangement."

Millar describes her esthetic as one of clean elegance. "I'm not someone who likes overdone interiors. I don't like a million different colors and fabrics... And not too much of a stage set. I would say that my esthetic is also based on a level of quality. I think it's a way of combining things that are expensive with things that are inexpensive to achieve a certain level of quality at a price that's affordable."

Certain of her own tastes, I asked Millar to generalize about the New York style?but she refused to bite. New York, she says, is infinitely varied. "People think there is a 'Park Avenue' look, but that's based more on the 1980s and Bonfire of the Vanities. I think if you were to go around you would see that there's really a multitude of looks... In New York there's just millions of unbelievable, unpredictable spaces inside buildings. There's lofts and formals and so many different things you can't guess. It's always very cool for me to go into a building and see the different interpretations... I think that's a wonderful part of working in the city."

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Joanne Riley, owner and lead designer of The Interior Edge, agrees. The city can't be captured by any one style. "There is every style in New York," she says. "People come from all over and they bring things from all parts of the world. New Yorkers expect things that are different, and there's an openness to design that you don't find in other parts of the country."

Riley's own apartment is decorated in all white, but her work for others ranges widely. I asked her how she determines which styles are right for which clients. "Questions, questions, questions. How do you live? How do you function? Where do you eat and what do you listen to? Then if you look around anyone's place you'll see they have vases, a piece of art, a tapestry. I'll ask them how they got it. I've picked up a tapestry and designed a whole room around it. It's really fun."

Riley works throughout the city. She designs apartments both large and small. Even studios? "Absolutely. Even studios. Anyone can hire a designer. It's how you hire them. You can hire them as a consultant if you don't want to spend too much money and you just want some good ideas."

I asked what sort of ideas were popular these days. In colors, she says, the trend is toward terra cottas and olive greens. Mauve is out. In living spaces, the trend is toward what Riley calls the great room concept. "A room that you can eat casually in, watch tv in, read in. Sort of a multi-functioning room that goes along with the nesting idea. And kitchens are really important. More important than ever. With a lot of built-in appliances to give you more counter space so you can actually cook."

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Not all designers see the same trends. The practicality of Riley's vision was turned somewhat upside down by the third designer I interviewed. When I asked Darren Henault to discuss trends in design, the first thing he mentioned was wine cellars: "Maybe it's post-9/11, but I think luxury is back. For me it never left."

Henault describes his own taste as Proustian. He likes brocade and silk, tassels and fringe. He splits his time between the East and West Coasts, and recently finished work on his sixth house for the brilliant theatrical singer Meat Loaf.

Like his colleagues, Henault said that design in New York is too diverse to be easily summed up, but he was willing to take a stab. "The only thing I really have to compare [New York] to is Los Angeles. But the people who hire me in Los Angeles hire me because they want an East Coast feeling. They want things to feel old, they want a sense of permanence. In New York I find people like living with old things that aren't pristine. New Yorkers want layered, they want texture, they want a room to be a real sanctuary at the end of the day."

Apart from a taste for the old, Henault said that New Yorkers have a different attitude toward design in general. "Here's my comparison. You give a New York couple and a California couple a two-million-dollar budget. The New York couple is gonna put a million dollars into trustfunds for their kids and then they'll spend a million dollars on their apartment. The L.A. couple is just going to blow the whole two million on the house. In L.A. people really do entertain in their homes. In New York they're meeting people out in restaurants. Only the very wealthy entertain at home. It's a question of space."

Henault says the shortage of space makes design in the city especially challenging. "People in New York will buy a 2000-square-foot apartment, when in Los Angeles 2000 square feet is one room. So in a 2000-square-foot apartment people want to fit in two or three bedrooms, they want a sitting room, a tv and a VCR. They want a ton of storage and a place to put their silver. They want two sinks in the kitchen. You have to be clever in New York."

I asked Henault what he likes best about working in the city. He echoed the words of all the designers I spoke to: "The people. You know, I work for very glamorous people and I work for people who are incredibly low-key. I mean, New York is just filled with really interesting people."