Interior Designer in Greenwich, CT

Who hires an interior designer in Greenwich?

Greenwich clients are mostly families in single-family houses, which make up 62% of the town's housing. They come to an interior designer when the house still suits the location but the rooms no longer suit daily life. Typical triggers include a new purchase, growing children, a dark center hall, or furniture that has outgrown its rooms.

What our interior design service includes

Our interior design service covers the whole interior renovation: the floor plan, built-in cabinetry, custom furniture that works as architecture, materials, color, and the floors underfoot.

Floor plan changes come first on most projects. Walls move, stairs open up, and rooms join so light and people can pass through. A registered architect or licensed engineer prepares the permit drawings, and we coordinate with them and with your contractor from the first sketch.

Built-ins carry a large share of the design. At the Colp-Haber Residence, a 2,200 sq ft Upper East Side apartment, one continuous band of birch cabinetry topped in vivid yellow changes height as it runs through the rooms. Along its length it becomes a desk, storage, living-room seating, bookshelves, a powder-room vanity, and kitchen seating. Built-in pieces take the place of walls, so the rooms stay open and each activity still has its spot.

Some clients assume an interior designer mostly picks sofas and paint. Our residential projects show a different mix: refinished existing floors, translucent and smart-glass partitions, collections of art and furniture worked into the plan, and, on several houses, exterior work alongside the interior. Decorating a single room or buying furniture on your behalf is something to raise at the consultation, since the portfolio shows full renovations.

Can an interior designer change the floor plan of my house?

Yes, as part of a renovation. An interior designer can plan which walls come down, how a stair opens, and where built-ins replace partitions. At Freedman House, removing one wall joined three rooms. Any structural change needs drawings from a registered architect or licensed engineer, and Cityzen coordinates that work with them and with your contractor.

Freedman House, a Greenwich brief turned into design decisions

Freedman House shows how a family's wish list in Greenwich became a set of specific design choices. The family asked for four things: more light, an open plan, their favorite color, and a home for the mid-century furniture they already owned.

Light came first. The Freedman House renovation uses a lighter material palette meant to bring natural light deeper into the 4,000 sq ft house. The existing maple floors were refinished in light gray. At the entry, the staircase wall was lowered and replaced with a stainless-steel cable railing, so daylight now reaches the hallway.

The open plan followed. We removed the wall between the sunken living room, dining room, and home office. A continuous walnut platform now ties those spaces together. Think of the platform as one long piece of furniture doing a wall's job. It begins as a step, turns into a built-in corner sofa, and ends in a low bookcase that you reach from several sides and that doubles as a serving surface for the dining room. The new stair landing can be approached from three directions.

Color and furniture finished the brief. Blue, the client's favorite color, appears as an accent throughout the house. New walnut furnishings were chosen to sit with the family's mid-century pieces.

The project won Silver in the Interior Design category of the 2024 New York Architecture Design Awards.

"Everyone who walks in, all love what we have done. You get all the credit." M. Freedman

How do you design around mid-century furniture a family already owns?

Start with the pieces, then shape the rooms and materials around them. At Freedman House in Greenwich, walnut furnishings and a walnut platform were chosen to suit the family's mid-century pieces. A lighter palette and gray-refinished maple floors let the wood stand out. Measuring and photographing every piece you plan to keep comes early.

Have a wish list like the Freedmans', with light, space, and a favorite color on it? We can walk through how each item could change your rooms.

Talk through your Greenwich floor plan with Azin

How a Greenwich interior design project with Cityzen runs

A Cityzen project in Greenwich starts with a confidential consultation and follows the three ideas in our design approach.

Context comes ahead of style. We start with how your family lives, what you value, and the character of the house. Flexibility shapes the plan, so rooms and built-ins adapt over the years and serve more than one purpose. Imagination fills in the rest, and we push clients to picture rooms beyond the usual arrangement.

Across the profession, the Bureau of Labor Statistics describes interior designers as the people who set a client's goals, sketch plans with electrical and partition layouts, specify materials and furnishings, and coordinate with building contractors. Our Greenwich work covers that ground, with Azin Valy in charge of the design from first meeting to finished rooms.

Consider an illustrative case. A family of five owns a center-hall house with a formal living room the family rarely uses and a crowded kitchen. The design work could fold the formal room into the kitchen, add a built-in bench with storage for school bags, and carry one accent color from the entry through the new family space. An architect or engineer would draw any structural change.

Past clients describe how projects ran in their testimonials. One says a renovation finished on time and on budget. Another describes a project that grew larger and longer than planned and was handled with diligence throughout.

What should I bring to a first meeting with an interior designer?

Bring whatever shows the house and how you use it. Floor plans or a survey, photos of each room, and a list of furniture and art you plan to keep are a good start. Add the rooms that frustrate you and why.

Azin Valy leads every Greenwich design

Azin Valy founded Cityzen Designs and leads each Greenwich project herself.

She trained at The Cooper Union School of Architecture and co-founded I-Beam Design, an award-winning architecture firm in New York. Over more than two decades, her work has ranged from 250,000 sf of international headquarters to 250 sf of refugee housing. Schools including Parsons School of Design, Pratt Institute, and Columbia University have invited her as a guest critic.

Her residential interiors have appeared in national press and publications, including The New York Times and New York Magazine. For a Greenwich family, the result is a designer who reads a floor plan the way an architect does and still cares which blue goes on the wall.

Commercial and hospitality interior design for Greenwich

Cityzen Designs also designs offices, showrooms, and restaurants, so a Greenwich business can bring its workplace or dining room to the same studio behind Freedman House.

The commercial portfolio includes a 9,000 sq ft bridal showroom and offices on Fifth Avenue for designer Reem Acra, completed with I-Beam Design. The plan leads clients through the collections, then into smaller rooms for consultations and fittings.

The hospitality portfolio includes 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.

Freedman House and these spaces share one idea: furniture and built-ins that shape a room as much as its walls do.

Key Takeaways

• 62% of Greenwich housing is single-family homes on one lot, and 72.8% of households are families.

• Cityzen's interior design service covers floor plans, built-in cabinetry, custom furniture, materials, color, and floors.

• A registered architect or licensed engineer prepares permit drawings, and Cityzen coordinates with them and your contractor.

• Freedman House turned a Greenwich family's brief for light, openness, blue, and mid-century furniture into specific design choices.

• Freedman House won Silver for Interior Design at the 2024 New York Architecture Design Awards.

Ready to see what your Greenwich house could become? Send us a few photos and a note about your family.

Ask about a design plan for your Greenwich house