Interior Designer in Great Neck, NY
Great Neck Plaza averages 1.88 persons per household, while Great Neck village averages 3.21, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates. We design interiors for both ends of that range, from a smaller apartment that has to hold a lifetime of furniture and art to a family house with room for everyone. Every plan starts with how you live.
Tell us what you own, what you love, and what is not working in your home.
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Key Highlights
Great Neck Plaza households average 1.88 persons and Great Neck village households average 3.21, per Census estimates for 2020 to 2024.
Cityzen Designs handles full interior renovations, open-plan layouts, custom built-in cabinetry, and material and color palettes.
The Lazzaro Residence opened a 1,000 sq ft two-bedroom into a loft planned around the owner's mid-century Eames collection.
Azin Valy brings more than two decades of work in design, interiors, and architecture.
Permit drawings come from a registered architect or licensed engineer, and Cityzen coordinates with them and your contractor.
Interior design services for Great Neck houses and apartments
Our interior design services in Great Neck suit owners who want a full renovation planned as one design, whether the home is a village house or an apartment. The peninsula is a patchwork, and the Town of North Hempstead lists nine incorporated villages under Great Neck, from Kings Point on the water to Great Neck Plaza near the train.
Household size changes the brief. A two-person apartment needs storage that hides in plain sight and rooms that do double duty. A family of four in a larger house needs places to gather, work, and get away from each other.
| What you want | What the design work involves | Who else is involved |
|---|---|---|
| Open up a divided layout | Rethinking walls, sightlines, and daylight, then using built-ins to mark out living, dining, and work areas | A registered architect or licensed engineer prepares permit drawings where your village requires them, and your contractor builds |
| Storage that looks like part of the room | Custom built-in cabinetry, desks, window seats, and shelving drawn for your space | Your contractor and cabinetmaker |
| Keep the furniture and art you own | Planning rooms, light, and built-ins around the pieces you plan to keep | You, since you know the collection best |
| A palette that holds together | Materials, colors, and finishes chosen as a set, including refinishing existing floors | Your contractor and suppliers |
| Privacy that still lets light in | Translucent walls, sliding panels, or switchable smart glass | Your contractor and the glazing installer |
Do you design apartments as well as houses in Great Neck?
Yes. Our residential portfolio includes Manhattan apartments from 950 to about 3,000 sq ft and a 4,000 sq ft family house in Greenwich, Connecticut. We have not yet completed a project in Great Neck. The same design approach applies to a Great Neck Plaza apartment or a Kings Point house.
Interior design services from Cityzen cover layout, built-ins, and finishes
Cityzen's interior design work covers the whole interior, from where the walls go to what the cabinet edges look like. On past projects, that has meant full interior renovations, open plans made by removing walls, custom built-in cabinetry, and furniture that doubles as architecture, such as platforms, seating, and bookcases.
Color and materials come in at the same time as the layout. At the Freedman House, existing maple floors were refinished light gray and the family's favorite blue became the accent throughout.
Interior designers in general do a wide range of tasks. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics notes that designers sketch preliminary plans that include electrical and partition layouts and coordinate with general building contractors. Our own role on a given project is set at the consultation.
Does Cityzen work on the outside of the house too?
Some of our projects include exterior renovation. At the 4,000 sq ft Summer Residence in Orient Point, on Long Island's North Fork, I-Beam Design developed the architectural approach that unified mismatched additions and opened the house to its gardens and pool. Exterior scope for your home is a question for the consultation.
Designing around furniture you already own, as in the Lazzaro Residence
We plan rooms around the furniture and art you already own, and the Lazzaro Residence shows how. The client owned a collection of mid-century Eames furniture. Cityzen opened a conventional 1,000 sq ft two-bedroom in the landmark Amalgamated building on the Lower East Side into an open loft built around those pieces.
Maple-veneer plywood with exposed layered edges forms the desks, counters, and window seats. White built-in cabinetry sits behind it as a calm backdrop. A continuous recessed aluminum reveal runs between the two and hides the lighting.
The bathroom got the most unusual move. A translucent wall and door let light pass through while keeping privacy, so the enclosure glows like a lantern in the living space. Wendy Goodman covered the apartment for New York Magazine, one of the stories collected on our press and publications page. Photos and plans are on the Lazzaro Residence project page.
Designing around a collection is closer to building a gallery than furnishing a room. The pieces stay put. Walls, light, and storage get arranged to serve them.
Here is a hypothetical example. A couple moves from a larger house into a Great Neck Plaza apartment and wants to keep a long walnut dining table and three family paintings. The plan would start with where the table can seat eight, then size wall space and lighting for the paintings, then fit storage around both.
How do you design around an Eames chair, a painting, or an heirloom?
We measure and photograph the pieces you plan to keep, then treat them as fixed points in the plan. Built-ins, lighting, and colors follow from them. On the McFarland Residence, credited to I-Beam Design, a client's red and pink painting set the cabinet colors and became a concealed door.
Recommended: List the furniture and art you plan to keep, with rough sizes, and bring photos to the consultation.
If you own pieces you refuse to part with, start there.
Discuss designing around your collection
A Cityzen interior design project starts with how you live
A Cityzen project starts with a conversation about your routines, what you value, and the character of your home. Our approach to design puts that context ahead of style. Here is how a project generally unfolds, based on that published approach:
A confidential consultation to talk through the home, your goals, and the scope.
A study of how you use each room and what you own, so the plan fits your life.
Design proposals for layout, built-ins, materials, and color, with spaces that serve more than one purpose.
Coordination with your architect, engineer, and contractor as the work is built.
Flexibility runs through the work. A desk that becomes a counter, or a step that becomes a sofa, lets a smaller Great Neck apartment act larger.
Clients notice the difference years later. One client who worked with Azin on and off for 25 years wrote, "She has literally brought light into our lived experience," in a note on our client testimonials page.
Azin Valy leads Cityzen's residential interior design
Azin Valy founded Cityzen Designs and leads the design work. A graduate of The Cooper Union School of Architecture, she co-founded the architecture and design practice I-Beam Design and has spent more than two decades on design, interiors, and architectural projects.
Her background as a designer and teacher includes guest critic roles at Parsons School of Design, Pratt Institute, Columbia University, Maryland Institute College of Art, Ball State University, and City College of NY. Her project scale has ranged from 250,000 sf of international headquarters to 250 sf of refugee housing.
The Freedman House earned a 2024 New York Architecture Design Awards Silver in Interior Design, one of the honors listed on our awards page.
Commercial and hospitality interior design for Great Neck
Cityzen Designs also designs offices, showrooms, and restaurants, and Great Neck business owners can hire the studio for those spaces.
On Long Island, our commercial interior design work includes the Stellae International headquarters in Melville, a 250,000 sq ft campus commissioned from I-Beam Design that converted a 150,000 sq ft office building and added two 50,000 sq ft warehouses. The project received a 2021 BILT Design Awards Honorable Mention.
In hospitality interior design, one project is the Macao Trading Co. restaurant in Tribeca, a 4,000 sq ft I-Beam Design project with an 82-seat dining room under a mezzanine. Salvaged teak lattice screens divide the room into smaller zones, and custom light fixtures reuse antique bicycles, boats, and rickshaws.
Designing around what a client already owns works in a business too, from a brand's signature materials to a restaurant's collected objects.
Key Takeaways
Great Neck Plaza averages 1.88 persons per household and Great Neck village averages 3.21, so floor plans on the peninsula serve very different households.
Cityzen Designs plans full interior renovations, open layouts, custom built-in cabinetry, and material palettes as one design.
The Lazzaro Residence was planned around the owner's Eames collection, with maple plywood built-ins and a translucent bathroom wall.
A registered architect or licensed engineer prepares permit drawings, and Cityzen coordinates with them and your contractor.
Azin Valy, a Cooper Union graduate and I-Beam Design co-founder, leads the design.
Ready to plan a Great Neck interior around the way you live and the pieces you love?
FAQ
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An interior designer plans how a home works and looks, from wall placement and storage to materials, lighting, and finishes. In a Cityzen renovation, that means designing the layout, custom built-in cabinetry, and color palette as one plan, then coordinating with the architect, engineer, and contractor who build it.
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Many renovations need both. An architect or licensed engineer prepares and seals permit drawings for work such as moving walls, while an interior designer shapes the rooms, built-ins, and finishes. Cityzen Designs does the interior design and coordinates with your architect and contractor so the two sets of decisions line up.
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Yes. Cityzen plans rooms around pieces clients want to keep. The Lazzaro Residence, a 1,000 sq ft Lower East Side loft, was designed around the owner's mid-century Eames furniture, with maple plywood built-ins and white cabinetry as a backdrop. Bring photos and rough sizes of your pieces to the consultation.
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Most projects in our portfolio are full interior renovations. Our contact page invites inquiries about a newly purchased home, an existing residence, or a commercial or hospitality project. If you have a single room in mind, describe it at the consultation and we will talk through whether the scope fits.
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The first consultation is a confidential conversation about your home, how you live in it, and what you want to change. Come ready to share photos, floor plans if you have them, and the furniture or art you plan to keep.