About The Decorator…and the decorated…

i.

Daniela Brown, principal —
Daniela Brown Interiors, LLC

“Whether the exterior of a home be of great architectural significance or of humble lines, it’s what awaits one in the interior that is important.”

What does one do armed with a background in art history, painting and 19th C literature, and with an eye that can’t walk into a room without mentally re-arranging the furniture, changing the color palette and dowsing the whole in fresh fabrics and textures?

Well, she (in this case "moi") tries brief stints with an auction house, an architect and an antique dealer. In between it all, friends ask her for help in re-doing a room, then lots of rooms and then whole houses, and then the misty fogginess in her head clears and Eureka!…she can decorate homes and make people happy…(and herself too, of course)!

And so her adventure into the wonderland of cocooning— began creating environments imbued with comfort, livable elegance and a sense of the people who live there:

• 01a newly built Eastern Long Island seaside home evocative of a family having been there for several generations, with furnishings and memorabilia seemingly collected throughout the years, the whole layered in warm, reassuring comfort;
• 02a fresh yet warm Hamptons beach house reflective of the owners’ love of fresh ‘lineny’ white, with an openness for entertaining inside and outside and…
• 03a small New York City pied-a-terre that carries the couples’ same predominantly white, monochromatic feeling as their beach house;
• 04a clean lined Tribeca loft with miles of library shelves to house the owner’s avid reading of history along with a formidable collection of rare books on baseball and with an abundance of rooms for children to have their own private space when they come to stay;
• 05a warm, colorful Upper East Side apartment reflective of the owner’s personality…a little traditional, a little modern, a lot welcome;
• 06a cozy Museum Row “kids have grown and gone” apartment pared down to reflect the owners’ personality with interests in music, art and photography while retaining the same sense of “home” that their previous family apartment had;
• 07a “where can we live while our real house is being designed” small Los Angeles mid-century bungalow that’s trying to figure out what’s reflective of her and what’s reflective of him…oh, and incorporate those not grand but of major personal importance articles like a blue frame mirror that “I spent time and love making” or that pheasant feather that “I found while walking through the woods trying to figure out my lfe”;

and so on and so on….. of many rooms and homes in which, alas, the camera was forgotten…