Interior Designer in Manhasset NY
Manhasset households average 2.73 persons each, so an interior renovation here plans rooms for a family's daily routines and its guests.
Cityzen Designs is a New York design studio founded by Azin Valy. We plan full interior renovations for Manhasset houses, from opened floor plans and built-in cabinetry to color chosen around the furniture and art you already own.
Tell us what your Manhasset house needs to do for your family.
Plan your Manhasset renovation
Every first conversation is a confidential consultation.
Key Highlights
Manhasset households average 2.73 persons, and 23.5% of residents are under 18 (U.S. Census, ACS 2020 to 2024).
82.1% of Manhasset residents lived in the same house a year earlier, so many homes get renovated in place.
Summer Residence is a 4,000 sq ft interior and exterior renovation on Long Island's North Fork.
Azin Valy brings more than two decades of work in design, interiors, and architecture.
| What you want | What the design work involves | Who else is involved |
|---|---|---|
| A closed floor plan opened up | Deciding which walls come out, how the rooms connect, and which built-ins define each area | A registered architect or licensed engineer prepares structural and permit drawings; your contractor builds |
| A house with additions that feels like one home | One set of materials, colors, and details carried through the old rooms and the new ones | An architect for any exterior or structural change |
| Storage and seating built into the rooms | Custom built-in cabinetry, platforms, window seats, and bookcases designed to the inch | A cabinetmaker or contractor builds what we design |
| Rooms planned around furniture and art you own | Walls, light, and layout planned around the pieces you keep | You, and your contractor for installation |
| New finishes and color | A material and color palette, including refinishing the existing floors | Your contractor and finishers |
Interior design services for Manhasset family homes
Cityzen's interior design service in Manhasset is for families who plan to stay in the house they own and want it to work better for them.
The numbers point that way. Census estimates put 23.5% of the hamlet's residents under 18, and 82.1% of residents lived in the same house a year earlier. Families here tend to renovate around children, schoolwork, and visiting relatives. A move is the less common answer.
We also work in the villages around the hamlet, including Munsey Park, Plandome, Plandome Heights, and Plandome Manor. Our residential interior design projects show the range, from compact Manhattan apartments to family houses outside the city.
What kind of houses does Cityzen work on in Manhasset?
Cityzen works on existing Manhasset houses that need a full interior renovation, from older houses with small rooms to houses enlarged over several decades. Some date to the 1930s, when Levitt & Sons built Strathmore-at-Manhasset as an upper-income subdivision in Tudor and Romanesque styles. Newly purchased homes are a good fit too.
What Cityzen's interior design service includes
Cityzen's interior design service covers the inside of the house as a whole: the plan, the built-ins, the materials, and the color.
In general terms, interior designers make indoor spaces functional, safe, and beautiful by working out how a space will be used and selecting what goes in it. Our portfolio shows what that looks like in practice:
Open-plan reconfiguration, removing walls between living, dining, and work areas
Custom built-in cabinetry and storage
Custom furniture that also does the job of architecture, such as platforms, seating, and bookcases
Material and color palettes
Refinishing existing floors
Rooms planned around a client's furniture and art collection
Translucent or smart-glass partitions that share light between rooms
Interior and exterior work on some projects
At Freedman House in Greenwich, CT, one walnut platform becomes a step, a corner sofa, and a bookcase. A Manhattan apartment in the portfolio uses a single band of birch cabinetry as desk, seating, and shelving. Both ideas suit a Manhasset family room that has to hold homework, guests, and a television.
Does an interior designer only choose furniture?
An interior designer on a renovation decides how rooms are laid out, where walls open, how storage is built in, and how light moves through the house. Furniture and finishes come last, once the plan works. Cityzen designs the built-ins and custom pieces itself and plans around the furniture you already own.
Summer Residence, a Long Island house made whole
Summer Residence in Orient Point, NY is the clearest example in our portfolio of a house that grew through additions and was renovated into one coherent home.
The house sits at the eastern end of Long Island's North Fork, a long drive from Manhasset. It is a late-modernist summer home of about 4,000 sq ft, and over the years mismatched additions had hidden its original character. I-Beam Design, the practice Azin Valy co-founded, developed the architectural approach for the Summer Residence interior and exterior renovation.
The work gave the old house and its additions one architectural language. A formerly inward-looking plan now opens to the gardens and the pool. Ipe and mahogany decking, stained cedar trellises, and angled white walls refer to Long Island's wooden boats. Aluminum panels and cantilevered canopies give shade, and a hornbeam tree grows up through the entry canopy.
Inside, custom details, the client's collected objects, and bold color carry the rooms. The interiors reflect the client's Haitian heritage and an interest in art and fashion. The project received an Honorable Mention in the IDA International Design Award.
A house built in stages reads like a book written by several authors. Each chapter makes sense alone, and the whole story does not. A renovation like Summer Residence edits the chapters so one voice runs through all of them.
The same thinking fits many Manhasset houses. Take a 1930s Tudor with a family room added in one decade and a kitchen extension in another. The three parts have different ceilings, floors, and window trim. A single floor finish, one cabinetry language, and a color plan that runs from the old entry to the new kitchen would make the house read as one place.
Have a Manhasset house built in stages? Bring us the plans you have.
Talk through your house with Azin
How a Manhasset project with Cityzen runs
A Manhasset project with Cityzen starts with a confidential consultation and follows the three ideas in our design approach: context first, flexibility, and room for imagination.
Consultation. We talk through the house, how your household uses it, and what you want changed.
Context first. We study the existing rooms, the light, the additions, and the pieces you plan to keep. Our view is that the best design grows from context, and trends come second.
Flexibility. We design rooms and built-ins that adapt and serve more than one purpose as a family grows.
Imagination. We encourage clients to consider ideas beyond the expected, then test them against the plan.
Coordination. We work with your architect or engineer, who prepares the sealed drawings, and with your contractor through construction.
Past clients describe how that plays out in their testimonials. One client, G.L., wrote that the renovation finished on time and on budget and that "I-Beam over-delivered on every aspect of the project."
Recommended: Gather photos of each room, a list of the furniture and art you plan to keep, and any existing plans or surveys of the house for your consultation.
Who coordinates the architect and the contractor?
Cityzen coordinates the design with your architect or engineer and your contractor throughout the project. The architect or engineer prepares the sealed drawings and permit filings, because those require a registered design professional. Cityzen keeps the interior plan, built-ins, and materials consistent with those drawings as the work moves from paper to site.
Azin Valy leads every Cityzen design
Azin Valy leads the design of every Cityzen project and stays involved from the first consultation to the finished rooms.
Azin Valy studied at The Cooper Union School of Architecture and co-founded I-Beam Design, an award-winning New York architecture firm. Her more than two decades of work run from 250,000 sf of international headquarters to 250 sf of refugee housing. She has served as a guest critic at Parsons School of Design, Pratt Institute, Columbia University, and City College of NY, among other schools.
Studio work has earned design awards, including a 2024 New York Architecture Design Awards Silver in the Interior Design category for Freedman House. Projects have appeared in press coverage in The New York Times, New York Magazine, and Dwell.
Commercial and hospitality interior design for Manhasset and Long Island
Cityzen Designs designs offices, showrooms, and restaurants as well as homes, including a large workplace project on Long Island.
That project is 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. The full range sits in our commercial interior design portfolio.
Our hospitality interior design 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.
A Manhasset business gets the same first question a homeowner does: how the people using the space spend their day.
Key Takeaways
Manhasset households average 2.73 persons, and 23.5% of residents are under 18 (ACS 2020 to 2024).
Cityzen's service covers floor plans, built-in cabinetry, custom furniture, materials, color, and floor refinishing.
Summer Residence on the North Fork shows a 4,000 sq ft house with additions renovated into one home.
A registered architect or licensed engineer prepares sealed drawings; Cityzen coordinates with them and your contractor.
Azin Valy, a Cooper Union graduate and I-Beam Design co-founder, leads every design.
Ready to talk about your Manhasset house?
FAQ
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An interior designer on a renovation plans how the rooms are laid out and used, designs built-in cabinetry and custom pieces, and sets the materials, finishes, and color. At Cityzen Designs, the work also means coordinating with your architect or engineer and your contractor so the finished house matches the design.
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A renovation that moves structural walls or changes the exterior needs a registered architect or licensed engineer for sealed drawings and permits. An interior designer shapes the plan, built-ins, materials, and color inside. Many whole-house renovations use both, and Cityzen Designs works alongside the architect or engineer on your project.
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Yes. Cityzen Designs often plans rooms around a client's existing pieces. One Manhattan project was laid out around a mid-century Eames furniture collection, and Summer Residence on the North Fork gives the client's collected objects a central role. Tell us at the consultation what you plan to keep.
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Cityzen Designs works on newly purchased homes and existing residences, and most portfolio projects are full interior renovations. If your Manhasset project is smaller, such as a kitchen and family room, describe it at the consultation. We will talk through the scope and whether our approach fits what the house needs.
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The first meeting with Cityzen Designs is a confidential consultation about your house, how your household lives in it, and what you want to change. Bring photos, plans if you have them, and a list of pieces you plan to keep.